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littp://www.arcliive.org/details/algernoncliarlessOOtliom 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 


UNIFORM   Willi  THIS   VOLUME: 

J.  M.  SYNGK 

By  p.  p.  Howe 

HKNRIK  IBSEN 

By  R.  Ellis  Roberts 

THOMAS  HARDY 

By  Lasckllks  Ahercrombie 

GEORGE  GISSING 

By  Frank  Swikvertok 

WILLIAM  MORRIS 
By  John  Drinkwateh 

THOMAS  LOVE  PEACOCK 
By  A.  Martin  Freeman 


mt.t^y^'n  , 


ALGERNON  CHARLES 

SWINBURNE 

A  CRITICAL  STUDY 

BY 

EDWARD  THOMAS 


NEW   YORK 
MITCHELL    KENNERLEY 

MCMXII 


WILLIAM    BRENDON    AND    SON,    LTD. 
PRINTERS,    PlYMOl'TH 


To 
WALTER  DE  LA  MARE 


'Questions,  0  royal  traveller,  are  easier  than  answers." 

THE   THREE   MULLA-JIl'LGAUS. 


PR 


NOTE 

I   AM   very   much   indebted   to   Mr.  Theodore 

Watts- Dunton   for   permission   to   quote   from 

Swinburne's    prose    and    poetry    in    this    book, 

and  to  my  friend,  Mr.  CUfFord  Bax,  for  many 

consultations. 

E.  T. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  ATALANTA  IN  CALYDON  11 

II.  PREPARATIOiNS  24 

III.  THE  APPROACH  69 

IV.  POEMS  AND  BALLADS  75 

V.  OPINIONS:    PROSE-WORKS  100 

VI.  SONGS  BEFORE  SUNRISE  127 

VII.  LATER  POEMS  :    CHARACTERISTICS      150 

VIIL  LATER  POEMS  :    RESULTS  ]71 

IX.  TRISTRAM  OF  LYONESSE  211 

X.  THE  PLAYS  225 


I 

ATALANTA   IN   CALYDON 

It  was  the  age  of  Browning's  Dramatis  Personas, 
William  Morris's  Defence  of  Guenevere,  Landor's 
Heroic  Idylls,  Tennyson's  Idylls  of  the  King, 
Meredith's  Modern  Love,  Robert  Buchanan's 
London  Poems ;  Longfellow,  Alexander  Smith 
and  Owen  Meredith  were  great  men. 

The  year  1864  arrived.  "  The  poetical  atmo- 
sphere was  exhausted  and  heavy,"  says  Professor 
Mackail,  "  like  that  of  a  sultry  afternoon  darken- 
ing to  thunder.  Out  of  that  stagnation  broke, 
all  in  a  moment,  the  blaze  and  crash  oi Atalcmta 
in  Calydon.  It  was  something  quite  new,  quite 
unexampled.  It  revealed  a  new  language  in 
English,  a  new  world  as  it  seemed  in  poetry." 
Two  years  passed,  and,  as  an  Edinburgh  reviewer 
says,  "into  the  midst  of  a  well-regulated  and 
self-respecting  society,  much  moved  by  Tenny- 
son's Idylls,  and  altogether  sympathetic  with 
the  misfortunes  of  the  blameless  King — justly 
appreciative  of  the  domestic  affection  so  tenderly 
portrayed  by  Coventry  Patmore's  Angel  in  the 

11 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

House" — appreciative  -aXso  o^  Atalantd  in  Ca/ij- 
don — ''  Mr.  Swinburne  charged  impetuously  with 
his  Poems  and  Ballads"  Some  of  the  Poems 
and  Ballads,  including  Faustine,  had  appeared 
four  years  earlier  in  the  Spectator  ;  but  the 
poems  accumulated  made  a  fresh  and  astonish- 
ing effect. 

The  Poems  and  Ballads  were  interesting 
enough  to  offend  many  people.  Atalanta  can 
hardly  have  been  interesting,  though  it  contains 
an  interesting  story  which  is  probably  revealed 
to  the  majority  of  readers  by  the  argument 
alone.  Althaea,  Queen  of  Calydon,  gave  birth 
to  Meleager  after  dreaming  that  she  had  brought 
forth  a  burning  brand.  The  Fates  prophesied 
that  he  should  be  strong  and  fortunate,  but 
should  die  as  soon  as  the  brand  then  in  the  fire 
were  consumed.  Althaea  plucked  out  the  brand 
and  took  care  of  it.  Meleager  sailed  away  with 
Jason  and  became  a  great  warrior.  But  in  one 
of  his  wars  he  gave  offence  to  Artemis,  who 
therefore  afflicted  Calydon  with  a  terrible  wild 
boar.  Only  after  all  the  chiefs  of  Greece  had 
warred  against  it  was  the  boar  slain,  and  that 
by  the  virgin  Atalanta,  because  Artemis  loved 
her.  Meleager,  enamoured  of  Atalanta,  gave 
the  spoil  of  the  boar  to  her,  thus  arousing  the 
jealousy  of  his  mother's  two  brethren.  These 
two  Meleager  slew  because  they  attempted  to 

12 


ATALANTA    IN    CALYDON 

take  away  the  spoil  from  Atalanta,  which  so 
moved  Althaea  to  anger  and  sorrow  that  she 
cast  the  brand  at  length  back  again  into  the  fire, 
and  it  was  consumed  and  INIeleager  died  ;  "  and 
his  mother  also  endured  not  long  after  for  very 
sorrow ;  and  this  was  his  end,  and  the  end  of  that 
hunting."  This  story  is  obliterated  by  the  form 
of  a  Greek  drama,  by  abundant  lyrics  put  into 
the  mouth  of  a  Greek  chorus,  by  Greek  idioms 
and  cast  of  speech,  and  by  an  exuberance  and 
individuality  of  language  which  could  not  always 
transmit  instantaneously  a  definite  meaning. 
But  the  obscurity  is  not  one  of  incompetence, 
the  imperfectly  intelligible  speech  is  not  an 
imperfection:  at  least  it  persuades  and  insinuates 
itself  so  into  the  mind  that  perhaps  not  many 
pause  at  the  end  of  the  first  sentence,  part  of  the 
Chief  Huntsman's  address  to  Artemis  : — 

Maiden,  and  mistress  of  the  months  and  stars 

Now  folded  in  the  flowerless  fields  of  heaven. 

Goddess  whom  all  gods  love  with  threefold  heart. 

Being  treble  in  thy  divided  deity, 

A  light  for  dead  men  and  dark  hours,  afoot 

Swift  on  the  hills  as  morning,  and  a  hand 

To  all  things  fierce  and  fleet  that  roar  and  range 

Mortal,  with  gentler  shafts  than  snow  or  sleep ; 

Hear  now  and  help  and  lift  no  violent  hand 

But  favourable  and  fair  as  thine  eyes  beam 

Hidden  and  shown  in  heaven ;  for  I  all  night 

Amid  the  king's  hounds  and  the  hunting  men 

Have  wrought  and  worshipped  toward  thee ;  nor  shall  man 

13 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

See  goodlier  hounds  or  deadlier  edge  of  spears ; 
But  fur  the  end,  that  lies  unreached  at  yet 
Between  the  hands  and  on  the  knees  of  the  Gods. 

The  effect  must  always  be  partly  that  of  a 
translation  even  to  those  who  are  familiar  with 
Greek  religion ;  the  words  have  a  shade  of  the 
quality  inseparable  from  a  translation,  whether 
it  is  or  is  not  creative,  for  it  is  to  be  found 
in  the  Authorized  Version  of  the  Bible ;  the 
reader  is  a  little  confused  and  yet  not  unduly, 
when  he  hears  of  Artemis  as  a  light  *'  for  dead 
men  and  dark  hours,"  of  the  fair-faced  sun  that 
kills  "the  stars  and  dews  and  dreams  and  de- 
solations of  the  night,"  for  it  is  not  English  thus 
to  collect  four  things  of  four  different  classes, 
each  requiring  a  distinct  change  in  the  meaning 
of  the  verb  which  governs  them  all.  Perhaps 
the  reader  at  first  accepts  "  hidden  and  shown," 
and  even  the  alternative  pairs,  "  roar  and  range," 
"snow  or  sleep,"  "favourable  and  fair,"  etc.,  as 
part  of  the  foreignness.  It  does  not  decrease. 
It  is  not  absent  from  : 

When  the  hounds  of  spring  are  on  winter's  traces. 

The  mother  of  months  in  meadow  or  plain 
Fills  the  shadows  and  windy  places 

With  lisp  of  leaves  and  ripple  of  rain  ; 
And  the  brown  bright  nightingale  amorous 

Is  half  assuaged  for  Itylus, 
For  the  Thracian  ships  and  the  foreign  faces, 
I      The  tongueless  vigil  and  all  the  pain. 
\  14 


ATALANTA    IN    CALYDON 

Only,  here  it  is  apparent  that  "the  shadows  and 
windy  places  "  may  be  due  to  rhyme  ;  at  least  it 
seems  a  false  limiting  or  defining  of  the  action  of 
the  lisp  of  leaves  and  ripple  of  rain,  as  later  on 
*'  peril  of  shallow  and  firth  "  is  a  distinction  with 
insufficient  definiteness  of  difference.  But  the 
metre  is  powerful  enough  to  overcome  this 
difficulty,  or  to  keep  it  from  rising ;  it  makes  us 
feel  that  we  may  go  astray  if  we  ask  why  the 
nightingale  is  called  "  bright "  as  well  as  "  brown." 
Later  on  it  may  be  suspected  that  "  bright " 
is  due  partly  to  Swinburne's  need  of  alliteration, 
partly  to  his  love  of  the  "  i  "  sound  and  of  bright- 
ness. Anyone  inclined  to  show  and  expect  a 
stiff  exactingness  will  be  shocked  at  finding 
"  summer  "  and  not  "  spring,"  "  autumn,"  or 
"  winter," — "  remembrance,"  without  "  forget- 
fulness  "  and  so  on — in  the  famous  lyric  ; 

Before  the  beginning  of  years 

There  came  to  the  making  of  man 
Time,  with  a  gift  of  tears  ; 

Grief  with  a  glass  that  ran ; 
Pleasure,  with  pain  for  leaven  ; 

Summer,  with  flowers  that  fell ; 
Remembrance  fallen  from  heaven, 

And  madness  risen  from  hell. 

This,  however,  has  that  appearance  of  precision 
which  Swinburne  always  affected,  which  is 
nothing  but  an  appearance.     Nor  would  he  have 

15 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

claimed  that  it  was  anything  more.  He  was 
filling  his  verse  with  solemn  images  acceptable 
to  that  part  of  the  human  brain  which  is  not 
occupied  with  the  music  of  the  words  and  the 
reverberation  of  earlier  images.  It  may  be  that 
Time  received  the  "  gift  of  tears  "  instead  of  the 
"  glass  that  ran  "  solely  for  the  sake  of  allitera- 
tion. It  would  doubtless  be  better  if  it  were 
not  so,  but  nothing  can  be  perfect  from  every 
point  of  view,  and  this  deceitful  deference  to  the 
pure  intellect  I  speak  of  chiefly  to  show  what 
Swinburne's  use  of  the  sounds  and  implications 
of  words  can  overcome.  Reverberation  of  sound 
and  meaning  as  in  Milton's  : 

Chariot  and  charioteer  lay  overturned  : 

and  Coleridge's  icicles : 

Quietly  shining  to  the  shining  moon  : 

are  a  great  part  of  Atalanta.  Scores  of  times 
words  and  sounds  are  repeated  as  in : 

Saw  with  strange  eyes  and  with  strange  lips  rejoiced. 
Seeing  these  mine  own  slain  of  mine  own,  and  me 
Made  miserable  above  all  miseries  made  : 

"  Breath  "  calls  for  the  rhyme  of  "  death,"  and 
"light"  for  "night,"  with  more  transparent 
purpose  than  in  other  writing ;  "  all "  demands 
to  be  repeated  with  a  persistency  that  is  not  to 
be  denied. 

Some  of  the  repetitions  may  indicate  simply 
16 


A 


ATALANTA    IN    CALYDON 

the  poet's  infatuation  with  certain  words,  but 
that  infatuation  would  not  be  without  signifi- 
cance. The  use  of  the  verb  and  the  substantive 
"  dream  "  six  times  in  eighteen  lines  spoken  by 
Althaea,  and  the  constant  use  of  "  divide  "  and 
"  division "  (not  to  speak  of  "  sever "  and 
"  sunder  "),  and  above  all  of  "  fire  "  and  "  light," 
"  bright "  and  "  shine," — these  are  not  accidents. 
"  Fire  "  and  "  light,"  "  bright "  and  "  shine,"  with 
"  desire "  and  "  high  "  and  "  sky,"  and  other 
words  which  their  vowel  sound  and  Swinburne's 
usage  make  cognate,  were  to  become  master  words 
in  his  poetry.  It  can  almost  be  said  that  he  never 
writes  one  of  those  words  without  repeating  it  or 
matching  it  with  one  of  the  others.  Whether  it 
be  through  the  influence  of  these  words  or  some- 
thing in  the  "  i "  sound  that  his  nature  found 
expressive,  I  cannot  say,  but  in  many  of  the 
poems  in  all  his  books  it  is  predominant,  so  that 
when  he  praises  a  thing  he  must  call  it  bright : — 
the  wind  is  bright,  the  sea  is  bright : — and  for 
him  the  characteristic  quality  of  the  human  face 
is  its  light. 

Pure  repetition,  also,  is  one  of  the  deliberate 
properties  of  his  style,  repetition  of  an  idea  as  in: 

O  death,  a  little,  a  little  while^  sweet  death^ 

or  of  a  sound  as  in : 

She  bore  the  goodliest  sword  of  all  the  world, 
B  17 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

or  of  both  as  in  : 

A  little  since,  and  I  was  glad,  and  now 
I  never  shall  be  glad  or  sad  again. 

Already  in  Atalanta,  and  still  more  in  later 
work,  this  unconscious  leaning  and  conscious 
device,  sometimes  became  a  trick. 

As  Swinburne  loved  and  used  the  qualities 
of  light  and  fire,  so  he  did  those  of  other  bold 
and  splendid  things.  Atalanta  is  full  of  swift, 
fleet,  violent,  splendid,  furious,  thunderous, 
fierce,  ravenous,  tumultuous,  tempestuous,  sharp 
things,  of  foam  and  wind,  and  fire  and  hate,  and 
love,  hounds  and  horses  and  warriors,  Meleager 
speaks  to  his  mother  of  his  father's  "  plough- 
share "  being  "  drawn  through  fatal  seedland  of  a 
female  field"  and  "  furrowing  her  body,"  to  beget 
him,  so  that  he  "  sprang  and  cleft "  her  womb. 
When  the  herald  describes  Atalanta  he  says : 

.   .   .   From  her  white  braced  shoulder  the  plumed  shafts 
Rangj  and  the  bow  shone  from  her  side ; 

and  he  compares  Meleager  to  the  sun  that 
"  strikes  "  the  branches  into  leaf  and  bloom  ;  he 
is  "  a  glory  among  men."  Death  for  Meleager  is 
the  "  empty  weary  house  "  which  lacks  "beauty," 
"  swift  eyes,"  and  "  might  of  hands  and  feet "  : 
he  says  that  there  is  nothing  "  terribler  "  than  a 
mother's  face.     The  Chorus  sings  of  Love : 

18 


ATALANTA    IN    CALYDON 

Thy  wings  make  light  in  the  air  as  the  wings  of  a  dove. 
Thy  feet  are  as  wings  that  divide  the  stream  of  the  sea ; 
Earth  is  thy  covering  to  hide  thee,  the  garment  of  thee. 
Thou  art  swift  and  subtle  and  blind  as  a  flame  of  fire ; 
Before  thee  the  laughter,  behind  thee  the  tears  of  desire.  .  .  . 

The  boar  "  cried  no  lesser  cry  "  than  "  thunder 
and  the  roar  of  wintering  streams."  So  does  the 
poet  love  the  extreme  that  he  makes  Meleager 
strike  the  boar  in  "the  hairiest  hollow  of  his  hide." 
Where  they  flay  the  boar  violets  "  blossom  and 
burn "  and  there  is  a  fire  and  light  of  other 
flowers. 

Yet  with  all  this  fury  and  violence  and  fire, 
the  play  is  a  delicate  thing,  full  of  a  refined 
extravagance  at  play  with  primitive  and  simple 
experiences  and  passions.  After  a  speech  of 
three  pages  about  her  murdered  brothers 
Althgea  says : 

These  dead 
I  shall  want  always  to  the  day  I  die. 

Perhaps  she  need  have  said  nothing  more  but 
Ai,  ai! 

Along  with  the  clear,  visible,  and  tangible 
things  are  equally  noticeable  the  abstractions — 
time,  grief,  sorrow,  the  "  holy  spirit  of  man  " — 
"  home-keeping  days  and  household  reverences," 
compassion  and  pity,  gates  "  barred  with  groan- 
ings  manifold."     Nothing  that  moves  the  eye 

19 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

or  the  heart  of  men,  but  finds  a  place.  And 
yet  all  is  made  into  music  and  ends  in  music. 
The  poet  is  the  master,  not  his  characters :  thus 
he  will  make  Atalanta  speak  of  the  flash  of  her 
own  "swift  white  feet,"  and  Althaea  describe 
herself  and  her  brother  as  infants  "flowerwise 
feeding  as  the  feeding  bees  "  at  their  mother's 
breast.  This  comparison,  if  at  all  permissible, 
should  have  been  made  by  the  poet  who  might 
be  supposed  to  have  witnessed  it,  not  by  the 
woman  who  could  not.  So  it  will  be  objected. 
But  what  would  have  been  a  flaw  in  another 
drama  is  not  one  in  Atalanta^  where  what  was 
necessary  was  to  do  nothing  inharmonious  with 
the  loveliness  of  the  title,  Atalanta  in  Calydoii. 
There  is  nothing  inharmonious.  So,  too,  with 
the  style ;  alliteration  that  could  have  made 
another  ludicrous  is  in  this  only  a  fit  portion  of 
the  echoing  balance  of  the  whole.  Hardly  before, 
perhaps,  except  in  lyrics,  or  in  narratives  like 
The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  had  words  been  so  self- 
contained,  so  much  an  end  in  themselves,  so 
little  fettered  to  what  they  could  suggest  but 
not  express.  The  words  are  everything :  all 
that  life  of  heroes  and  passionate  women,  seas 
and  winds,  has  been  subdued  to  the  colour  of 
the  words  and  the  music  of  their  cadence. 
Where  the  words  cannot  be  everything,  where 
two  characters  interchange  brief  speeches  that 

20 


ATALANTA    IN    CALYDON 

allow  no  lyrical  development,  they  deserve  the 
parody  of  Lowell : 

Chorus  :  Foolish  who  bites  off  nose,  his  face  to  spite. 

OuTis :  Who  fears  his  fate,  him  Fate  shall  one  day 
spurn. 

Chorus  :  The  Gods  themselves  are  pliable  to  Fate. 

OuTis :  The  strong  self-ruler  dreads  no  other  sway. 

Chorus  :  Sometimes  the  shortest  way  goes  most  about. 

OuTis  :  A  shepherd  once,  I  know  that  stars  may  set. 

Chorus  :  Why  fetch  a  compass,  having  stars  within  ? 

OuTis :  That  thou  led'st  sheep  fits  not  for  leading  men. 

Chorus  :  To  sleep-sealed  eyes  the  wolf-dog  barks  in 
vain. 

The  play  cannot  be  abridged  or  divided 
without  complete  destruction.  There  are  few 
separable  phrases  or  passages  in  it  that  are  not 
far  more  beautiful  in  their  places,  because  the 
key  to  them  is  only  to  be  found  in  the  play, 
not  in  the  human  breast.  The  whole  should 
be  read,  or  heard,  at  a  sitting,  for  the  first  time 
at  least.  Pause,  to  let  in  the  light  of  every 
day,  and  it  may  seem  as  it  did  to  Browning, 
"  a  fuzz  of  words."  It  is  very  nicely  balanced 
above  folly.  It  is  one-sided  and  makes  but 
a  single  appeal.  It  can  suffer  by  the  in- 
trusion of  the  world,  the  sound  of  men  talk- 
ing or  nightingales  singing.  For  it  does  not 
appeal  to  us  as  men  knowing  aught  of  men  or 
nightingales:  experience  can  add  nothing  to  it, 

21 


A.   C.   SWl  NlUJllNK 

or  take  away  anything  ;  and  to-day  it  cannot 
be  seriously  blamed  for  a  chorus  which,  as 
Tennyson  said,  abused  the  deity  in  the  style  of 
the  Hebrew  prophets.  The  words  in  it  have 
no  rich  inheritance  from  old  usage  of  speech  or 
poetry,  even  when  they  are  poetic  or  archaic 
or  Biblical.  They  have  little  variety  of  tone, 
being  for  the  most  part  majestically  mournful, 
and  never  suddenly  changing  tone.  Variety  is 
given  chiefly  by  the  metre,  and  the  differences 
of  that  are  almost  numberless.  The  blank 
verse  changes  and  does  everything  save  speak. 
As  to  the  lyric  verse  it  is  of  many  forms,  and 
each  is  so  clear  cut  and  so  masterful  to  words 
without  show  of  tyranny  that  a  man  might 
suppose  any  words  would  do  as  well  and 
would  maintain  the  same  joy  of  metre.  Hardly 
do  we  notice  in  the  sweetness  of  it  an  un- 
English  phrase  like  "  imminence  of  wings  "  or 
"  the  innumerable  Hly,"  after  the  opening  : 

O  that  I  now,  I  too  were 

By  deep  wells  and  water-floods.   .  .  . 

Again  and  again  it  tempts  us  to  recall  the 
opinion  that  the  words  are  everything,  and  say 
that  they  are  nothing ;  certainly  it  matters 
little  what  exactly  is  meant  by  "bodies  of 
things  to  be  in  the  houses  of  death  and  of 
birth."     It   is   sufficient  that   the   words  never 

22 


AT A L ANT A   IN    CALYDON 

impede  the  music,  and  often  colour  it  with 
something  noble,  or  delicate,  or  pathetic,  that 
the  "rhythm,"  as  Burne-Jones  said,  "goes  on 
with  such  a  rush  that  it  is  enough  to  carry  the 
world  away."  Swinburne  could  make  even  a 
line  of  monosyllables  swift  and  leaping  by  using 
in  the  unaccented  places  negligible  words, 
like  "  and,"  "  of,"  and  "  the,"  which  are  almost 
silent.  Tennyson  wrote  to  the  poet  telling  him 
that  he  envied  him  his  wonderful  rhythmical 
invention.  Tennyson's  own  had  always  been 
carefully  experimental  and  subordinate ;  in 
Atalanta  rhythm  was  paramount,  in  rule  sole 
and  undivided. 


23 


II 

PREPARATIONS 

Swinburne  was  twenty-seven  years  old  in  1864, 
yet  he  had  been  before  the  public  already  six- 
teen years.  The  reader  of  Eraser's  Magazine  in 
April,  1848 — the  year  after  Tennyson's  The 
Princess — might  have  seen  some  verses  entitled 
*'  The  Warning "  put  into  the  mouth  of  a 
minstrel  singing  to  the  nobles  and  far-descended 
gentlemen  of  England,  to  this  purpose  : 

Then  don't  despise  the  working  man,  he's  strong  and  honest 

too, 
And  he  would  rather  governed  be  than  seek  to  govern  you  ; 
But  lack  of  proper  guidance  at  last  may  make  him  mad, 
And  when  the  best  don't  govern  him,  he'll  call  upon  the 

bad  ; 
From  whence  will  come  confusion  and  terrible  turmoil, 
And  all  because  the  lawmakers,  the  owners  of  the  soil. 
Will  hear  no  word  of  warning  meant,  will  take  no  step  in 

time. 
Before  the  groaning  millions  burst  from  sorrow  into  crime. 

These  verses,  signed    A.  C.  S.,   were    dated 
from  the  Carlton  Club.     AVhat  the  effect  of  the 

24 


PREPARATIONS 

warning  was  in  1848  it  is  now  hard  to  say,  but 
certain  it  is  there  was  still  need,  in  January, 
1851,  of  a  further  address,  and  in  the  same 
magazine.  "Ye  landlords  rich,"  cried  the 
poet: 

Ye  landlords  rich  !  lay  it  well  to  hearty 

There  is  peril  for  all  at  handj 
For  the  peasant  has  got  too  mean  a  part 

Of  wealth  in  his  native  land. 
With  a  scornful  eye  and  a  heedless  mien. 

And  a  mantle  of  furs  so  thick, 
How  little  ye  dream  of  the  fearful  care 

When  the  labourer's  wife  is  sick. 

How  little  ye  dream,  etc.  .  .  . 

This  was  from  the  same  hand.  An  equally 
solemn  but  less  altruistic  poem,  in  October, 
1849,  had  informed  the  readers  of  Fraser's 
Magazine  that  the  poet  had  heard  a  spirit  sing- 
ing "  as  from  a  distant  sphere,"  in  the  following 
words : 

"  And  oh  !  my  child,  be  heedful  that  you  wander  not  in  sin. 
For  your  sorrow  will  be  the  greater,  the  more  you  venture 

in; 
And  the  sorrows  of  the  essence,  when  it  leaves  its  fleshly 

cell, 
Are  deeper  than  the  angels  to  mortality  may  tell." 
At  the  silent  hour  of  midnight  thus  my  mother  sang  to  me, 
And  I  felt  that  she  was  near  ;  though  her  form  I  could  not 

see. 

25 


A.   C.   SW  IN  15  U  UN  E 

He  had  sun«^,  too,  of  "  Fate  tliat  rules  us  here 
with  adamantine  wand,"  and  of  how — 

A  peace  that  is  based  on  duty, 
The  will  and  the  power  to  think, 
Can  carry,  unscathed  in  beauty, 
The  brave  where  the  feeble  sink.   .   .   . 

Little  need  was  there  to  tell  the  world  that 
the  poet  had  "  learnt  in  suffering  what  he 
taught  in  song  "  : 

Hark  !  how  the  poet  sings 

Whom  grief  is  wearing  ; 
Like  as  the  flower  springs 

Into  full  bearing. 

Where  amid  old  decay 

Fine  skill  has  laid  it ; 
Even  so  the  poet's  lay — 

His  woes  have  made  it. 

This  was  said  in  April,  1849.  But  he  had 
consolations.  He  published  a  poem  in  the  same 
magazine  side  by  side  with  Kingsley's  Yeast,  in 
August,  1848,  on  Chopin's  playing,  and  stanzas 
addressed  to  a  "  wild  floating  symphony "  in 
March,  1849.  A  month  before  had  appeared 
this  "  catch  "  : 

Near  the  moon  a  pale  star  clinging 

Harbingers  another  morn. 
Feeble  spark  to  mortals  bringing 

Hopes  and  cares  with  daylight  born. 

26 


PREPARATIONS 

Fare  thee  well,  thou  moon  of  sadness ! 

Silent  night,  awhile  farewell ! 
Will  the  day  give  grief  or  gladness  ? 

Who  of  Adam's  race  can  tell  ? 

Fare  thee  well,  thou  moon  of  beauty  ! 

Hail,  thou  glorious  rising  sun  ! 
Let  the  weak  be  strong  in  duty. 

Till  their  course,  like  thine,  be  run. 

He  could  write  playfully  of  love  as  in  "  Under 
the  Rose,"  but  his  preference  was  rather  for  the 
dignified  reflection  that  marked  his  last  contri- 
bution, in  June,  1851,  "  A  Summer  Thought "  : 

Upon  that  tree  wave  not  two  leaves  alike. 

Yet  are  they  all  oak  leaves,  and  all  derive 

From  the  same  source,  by  the  same  means,  their  food. 

Each  hath  its  voice,  yet  when  the  mighty  wind 

Sweeps  o'er  them  as  a  lyre,  one  song  is  theirs. 

One  hymn  of  praise,  to  the  Great  Lord  of  All. 

When  shall  we  be  like  them — when  understand 

That  if  we  grow  upon  the  topmost  bough 

Of  the  great  tree, — or  be  so  lowly  placed 

That  we  must  touch  the  daisy  at  its  foot. 

One  origin  is  ours,  one  aim,  one  work. 

One  God  to  bless,  one  tie  of  love  to  bind. 

This  poem  was  sufficient  to  prove  that  the 
author  was  not  "lowly  placed."  The  reader 
might  also  have  concluded  that  he  was  twenty- 
three,  that  he  had  soon  afterwards  fallen  in 
love  with  a  lady  sharing  his  admiration  for  In 

27 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

IMemoriam,  and  had  married  and  rested  content 
and  graceful 

Upon  the  topmost  bough 
Of  the  great  tree. 

Algernon  Charles  Swinburne,  in  fact,  was 
born  on  April  5th,  1837,  in  Chapel  Street,  Bel- 
gravia,  the  only  son  of  Admiral  Charles  Henry 
Swinburne  and  his  wife  Lady  Jane  Henrietta, 
daughter  of  the  third  earl  of  Ashburnham. 
AVhat  he  meant  by  telling  the  exiled  Hugo 
that  he  was  "  born  of  exiles  "  I  do  not  know. 
From  his  father  he  had  the  blood  of  a  feudal 
border  family,  "which  as  long  ago  as  Edward  H 
had  produced  a  man  of  mark  in  Sir  Adam  de 
Swinburne,"  says  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse  in  the 
Contemporary  Review ;  from  his  mother,  the 
blood  of  a  loyal  groom  of  the  bedchamber  to 
Charles  I.  The  child  was  not  long  in  Bel- 
gravia.  His  grandfather,  Sir  John  Edward 
Swinburne,  baronet,  had  a  house  at  Capheaton, 
in  Northumberland,  where  the  family  used  to 
spend  half  the  year.  His  father  bought  East 
Dene,  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  between  A^entnor 
and  Niton,  and  this  house  the  grandfather 
shared  with  him  for  the  other  half-year.  Close 
to  East  Dene,  at  The  Orchard,  lived  other  rela- 
tions, whose  kindness  the  poet  was  afterwards 
to  recall  in  dedicating  TJie  Sisters  to  his  aunt, 

28 


PREPARATIONS 

the  Lady  Mary  Gordon.  Here  and  in  North- 
umberland he  had,  as  he  always  remembered 
and  repeated  in  his  poetry, 

The  sun  to  sport  in  and  the  cHfFs  to  scale, 
The  sea  to  clasp  and  wrestle  with.  .  .  . 

Such  joys,  he  said,  "even  now  make  child 
and  boy  and  man  seem  one."  Tennyson  did 
not  come  to  the  Isle  of  Wight  until  1853,  but 
Swinburne  preferred  to  think,  and  certainly  to 
write,  about  Northumberland.  That  tale  of 
Balen  and  Balan,  "two  brethren  of  North- 
umberland," gave  him  an  excuse  for  recalling 
his  own  pleasures  in  describing  Balen's : 

The  joy  that  lives  at  heart  and  home, 
The  joy  to  rest,  the  joy  to  roam. 
The  joy  of  crags  and  scaurs  he  clomb. 
The  rapture  of  the  encountering  foam 

Embraced  and  breasted  of  the  boy. 
The  first  good  steed  his  knees  bestrode. 
The  first  wild  sound  of  songs  that  flowed 
Through  ears  that  thrilled  and  heart  that  glowed. 

Fulfilled  his  death  with  joy, 

Swinburne  thought  of  himself  as  "a  northern 
child  of  earth  and  sea."  In  Tristram  of  Lyonesse 
he  rejoiced  to  have  Tristram  and  Iseult  at  Joyous 
Gard,  because  that  castle  might  be  supposed 
Northumbrian  and  he  could  mingle  the  hero  with 
himself  and  the  castle  with  his  own  home — 

29 


A.   C.   SWINBURNE 

The  great  round  jfirth  of  jroodly  wall  that  showed 
Where  for  one  clear  sweet  season's  K-ngth  should  be 
Their  place  of  strenfrth  to  rest  in,  fain  and  free. 
By  the  utmost  margin  of  the  loud  lone  sea. 

'I'hc  poet  shared  his  heroine,  Mary  Stuart's 
longintT,  when  she  cried :  "  O  that  I  were  now 
in  saddle ! "  He  shared  with  her,  too,  her  pre- 
ference of  the  moors,  where  *'  the  wind  and  sun 
make  madder  mirth  by  midsummer,"  to  the 
smoother  south.  Reginald  in  I'/tc  Sisters  makes 
the  same  comparison,  saying  that  even  with- 
out the  streams  the  north  would  be  sweeter, 
that  even  with  the  northern  streams  the  south 
could  not  "  match  our  borders."  The  youthful 
Swinburne  bound  together  the  pleasures  of 
riding,  the  moor  and  the  sea,  in  days  which  he 
afterwards  revived  for  the  dedication  of  his 
third  series  of  Poems  and  Ballads  : 

Days  when  I  rode  by  moors  and  streams. 
Reining  my  rhymes  into  buoyant  order. 

He  was  a  fearless  rider,  a  fearless  climber. 
He  cHmbed  Culver  Cliff  in  the  Isle  of  Wight  at 
a  great  risk,  to  prove  his  nerve,  and  his  picture 
in  Tristram  of  the  birds  "on  some  straight 
rocks'  ledge," 

Still  as  fair  shapes  fixed  on  some  wondrous  wall 
Of  minster  aisle  or  cloister-close  or  hall  .   .  . 

might  be  a  memory  gained  from  such  a  climb. 

30 


PREPARATIONS 

Riding  and  climbing  were  good,  and  very 
good,  but  swimming  was  best  of  all.  The  north 
might  be  better  than  the  south :  the  sea  was 
always  the  sea.  In  after  years  he  wrote  many 
poems  about  the  sea  and  hardly  one  without  it. 
The  sea  and  not  the  earth,  he  said,  was  his 
mother.  Sometimes  he  coupled  with  it  the 
wind,  hailing  them,  as  in  The  Garden  of  Cymo- 
doce : 

Sea,  and  bright  wind^  and  heaven  of  ardent  air. 
More  dear  than  all  things  earth-born  ;  O  to  me 
Mother  more  dear  than  love's  own  longing,  sea. 
More  than  love's  eyes  are,  fair.  .  .  . 

Sometimes  he  worshipped  the  sun,  "  O  sun 
that  we  see  to  be  God  " ;  but  it  was  in  the  sea 
that  he  did  so.  For  a  beautiful  or  a  terrible 
comparison  he  had  usually  to  go  to  the  sea,  and 
having  gone  there  seemed  to  forget,  certainly 
made  others  forget,  why  he  had  gone  :  as  when, 
for  example,  he  says  that  Blake's  verse  "  pauses 
and  musters,  and  falls  always  as  a  wave  does, 
with  the  same  patience  of  gathering  form,  and 
rounded  glory  of  springing  curve,  and  sharp, 
sweet  flash  of  dishevelled  and  flickering  foam  as 
it  curls  over,  showing  the  sun  through  its  soft 
heaving  side  in  veins  of  gold  that  inscribe  and 
jewels  of  green  that  inlay  the  quivering  and 
sundering  skirt  or  veil  of  tliinner  water,  throw- 

31 


A.    C.   SWINBURNE 

ing  upon  the  tremulous  space  of  narrowing  sea 
in  front,  like  a  reflection  of  lifted  and  vibrating 
hair,  the  windy  shadow  of  its  shaken  spray." 

A  fanciful  critic  has  put  down  the  faulty 
lengthiness  of  Swinburne's  poems  to  a  "  sea- 
obsession,"  saying  that  "  his  major  forces  and 
his  high  creative  impulse  have,  since  Marij 
Stuart,  been  mainly  devoted  to  the  splendidly 
impossible  feat  of  providing  continual  lyrical 
change  for  the  most  monotonous  theme  in  exist- 
ence." His  Tristram  shared  his  delight,  leaping 
towards  the  sea's  breast  with  a  cry  of  love  "  as 
toward  a  mother's  where  his  head  might  rest " ; 
his  Marino  Faliero  at  the  last  hour  desired — 
"  perchance  but  a  boy's  wish  " — to  "  set  sail  and 
die  at  sea."  As  a  boy  the  poet  earned  the  name 
of  Seagull,  which  he  seems  to  recall  in  the  poem 
To  a  Sea-mew — 

When  I  had  wings,  my  brother. 
Such  wings  were  mine  as  thine  .  .  . 

This  was  in  1886  ;  yet  he  ended  : 

Ah,  well  were  I  for  ever, 

Would'st  thou  change  lives  with  me. 

When  he  was  a  sea-gull  he  was  writing  those 
serious  poems  in  Fraser's  Magazine.  Reading 
became  a  pleasure  to  him  not  unworthy  to  be 
ranked   with   swimming   and   riding.     He   had 

32 


PREPARATIONS 

Matthew  Arnold's  Strayed  Reveller,  Forsaken 
Merman,  and  even  the  New  Sirens  by  heart, 
when  he  was  "just  ignorant  of  teens":  Empe- 
docles,  and  especially  the  songs  of  Callicles,  he 
knew  as  a  schoolboy.  His  debts  to  Tennyson, 
as  he  told  the  poet  in  acknowledging  his  praise 
of  Atalanta,  had  begun  to  accumulate  in  his 
twelfth  year.  In  his  book  on  Shakespeare  he 
said  that,  from  "  well-nigh  the  first  years "  he 
could  remember,  he  had  "  made  of  the  study  of 
Shakespeare  the  chief  spiritual  delight"  of  his 
life.  Probably  he  was  one  of  those  to  whose 
"  innocent  infantine  perceptions  the  first  obscure 
electric  revelation  of  what  Blake  calls  the 
'Eternal  Female'  was  given  through  a  blind 
wondering  thrill  of  childish  rapture  by  a  light- 
ning on  the  baby  dawn  of  their  senses  and  their 
soul  from  the  sunrise  of  Shakespeare's  Cleo- 
patra." At  home  he  was  given  the  privilege  of 
reading  at  meals.  What  he  very  much  Hked, 
indoors  or  out  of  doors,  he  would  read  aloud  or 
recite :  a  cousin  remembers  him  reciting  "  the 
Victorian  poets  "  and  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome.  To 
his  heroes  he  could  be  a  valet,  and  was  doubtless 
"  thankful  for  having  over  our  heads  somewhere 
in  the  world  "  heroes  like  "Victor  Hugo  or  Miss 
Cherbury  the  actress,  Tennyson  or  a  fellow  who 
rode  in  the  Balaclava  charge,"  as  he  says  in  Love's 
Cross-Curj^ents.  "  The  delight  of  feeling  small 
c  33 


A.   C.   SWINBURNE 

and  ^nving  in  "  at  the  sight  of  tlie  hero  was  one 
whicli  lie  never  lost,  but  it  may  have  been  en- 
couraf^ed  and  defined  by  Carlyle's  Heroes, 
For  Carlyle  he  did  admire  at  first.  Dickens 
he  admired  from  first  to  last,  reading  Bleak 
House  in  its  serial  form  while  he  was  at  Eton. 

Except  in  cases  of  physical  disobedience  pro- 
bably the  only  curb  to  his  freedom  was  the 
tradition  of  his  class.  But  it  is  said  that  his 
mother  asked  him  not  to  read  Byron  till  he  was 
twenty-one :  if  he  literally  obeyed  her,  as  is  said, 
he  gave  a  fresh  proof  that  the  like  prohibitions 
are  powerless  except  as  direct  incentives  to  dis- 
obey the  spirit.  The  religion  of  his  family  was 
presumably  that  of  his  class ;  it  either  produced 
or  could  not  prevent  an  atheism  like  Shelley's, 
but  it  encouraged  a  study  of  the  Bible  which 
afterwards  served  him  in  helping  Jowett  to 
make  a  selection  for  the  reading  of  children, 
and  to  draw  :'i'om  his  collaborator  a  cordial 
compliment  on  his  "  thorough  familiarity  with 
sundry  parts  of  the  sacred  text."  It  left  him, 
as  it  helped  to  make  him,  such  that  one  who 
knew  him  all  throuijh  his  life  said  :  "  I  never 
met  with  a  character  more  thoroughly  loyal, 
chivalrous  and — thousjh  some  of  his  utterances 
may  seem  to  contradict  it — reverent-minded. 
His  reverence  for  the  aged  and  for  parents, 
women  and  little  children  was  unlike  any  other 

34. 


PREPARATIONS 

man's  that  I  ever  knew."  "For  such  an  one" 
as  Othello,  he  wrote  afterwards,  "even  a  boy 
may  well  think  how  thankfully  and  joyfully  he 
would  lay  down  his  life  " :  such  a  boy  it  seems 
was  Swinburne  himself.  Until  his  life  is  written 
we  can  know  little  more  of  his  home  days, 
except  that  they  left  him  free  to  enjoy  Nature 
and  literature  to  the  uttermost,  and  kept  m  him 
to  the  last  a  happy  and  passionate  memory  of 
his  childhood  and  a  fond  if  independent  regard 
for  those  who  shared  it,  father  and  mother,  aunt, 
cousin  and  sisters.  Admiral  Swinburne  being 
a  sailor,  the  poet  could  magnify  him  and  at  his 
death  speak  of  him — but  ambiguously — as  cross- 
ing "  the  last  of  many  an  unsailed  sea " :  in 
A  Study  of  Victor  Hugo  he  records  with  "  filial 
vanity  or  egotism "  his  father's  friendship  in 
youth  with  Admiral  Canaris,  to  whom  Victor 
Hugo  addressed  "  two  glorious  poems."  While 
he  was  writing  Charlotte  Bronte,  not  long  before 
the  death  of  his  father,  he  could  not  but  use  as 
an  illustration  the  landscape  by  Crome  hanging 
in  the  house  where  he  worked,  which  he  had 
known  all  through  the  years  he  could  remember. 
Five  years  at  Eton  would  appear  not  to  have 
interrupted  or  much  aided  his  development, 
unless  they  helped  to  make  him  a  scholar. 
Since  he  had  been  until  then  a  home-bred  boy, 
and   was   neither   an   athlete   nor   an    ordinary 

35 


A.   C.    SWINBURNE 

amusing  person,  it  is  possible  that  he  enjoyed 
his  schookhiys  cliieHy  in  retrospect.  Whether 
or  not,  he  was  hard  pressed  for  matter  when  he 
came,  in  1801,  to  write  ''Eton:  An  Ocie  for  the 
Four  Hundred  and  Fiftieth  Anniversary  of  the 
Foundation  of  the  College  "  ;  he  had  to  drag  in 
Shelley,  to  remark  that  the  reaches  of  the  river 
still  shine,  and  to  suggest  that  in  another  four 
hundred  and  fifty  years  "  haply  here  shall  Eton's 
record  be  what  England  finds  it  yet."  But  he 
was  a  good  enough  Etonian  to  rejoice,  after 
copying  out  some  mistaken  Greek  of  Shelley's, 
that  "  Shelley  was  clear  of  Eton  when  he  com- 
mitted this  verse."  Swinburne  himself  mastered 
and  obeyed  Greek  scholarship  to  admiration. 
He  delicfhted  in  language.  Once  at  Eton  he 
offered  for  an  exercise  a  set  of  verses  in  Galli- 
ambics,  the  metre  of  Tennyson's  Boadicea,  with 
tragic  consequences,  for  they  were  rejected  by 
the  master  as  "  no  metre  at  all."  The  young 
versifier  and  lover  of  poetry  was  not  to  be  dis- 
couraged by  a  schoolmaster :  he  was  more  likely 
to  be  impressed  by  his  first  meeting  with  a  poet 
in  his  early  school  days,  for  though  the  poet 
was  only  Rogers  he  showed  "  gracious  and 
cordial  kindness  "  to  the  '*  small  Etonian." 

But  he  had  already  met  in  the  spirit  "the 
spiritual  sovereign  of  the  nineteenth  century  " — 
"greater  than  all  other  poets  of  his  time  to- 

3G 


PREPARATIONS 

gether  " — "  the  greatest  man  since  Shakespeare  " 
— Victor  Hugo,  his  lord  and  master.  He  was 
afterwards  to  speak  of  himself  as  one  of  those 
who  from  childhood  had  fostered  and  fortified 
whatever  of  good  was  born  in  them — "all 
capacity  of  spiritual  work,  all  seed  of  human 
sympathy,  all  powers  of  hope  and  faith,  all 
passions  and  aspirations  found  loyal  to  the 
service  of  duty  and  love  " — with  "  the  bread 
of  his  deathless  word  and  the  wine  "  of  Hugo's 
immortal  song.  He  was  to  recall  how  often 
he  had  chanted  or  shouted  or  otherwise  de- 
claimed Hugo's  Gastibelza  on  horseback  or  in 
the  sea  in  holiday  time : 

Gastibelzaj  rhomme  a.  la  carabine 

Chantait  ainsi : 
Quelqu'un  a-t-il  connu  dona  Sabine  ? 

Quelqu'un  d'ici  ? 
Dansez,  chantez,  villageois  !  la  nuit  gagne 

Le  mont  Falou. 
Le  vent  qui  vient  a  travels  la  montagne 

Me  rendra  fou. 

He  recalled  how  its  beauty  had  "reduced  his 
own  ambition  to  a  sort  of  rapturous  and  adoring 
despair,"  and  gave  him  a  new  delight  in  the 
sense  that  "  there  is  always  Victor  Hugo,  living 
or  dead,  to  look  up  to  and  bow  down  to."  He 
had  still  further  to  recall  the  "  paternal  good- 
ness "  of  Hugo  in  vouchsafing  to  take  notice  of 

37 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

one  of  his  early  "  crude  and  puerile  "  attempts 
"  to  render  some  tribute  of  tlianks  for  tlie  gifts 
of  his  genius."  He  was  to  use  first  of  all  as  a 
comparison  for  Hugo  one  of  the  sublimest 
scenes  of  his  life,  a  night  scene  in  the  Channel, 
of  forked  and  sheet  lightning,  of  moonlight 
and  phosphoric  fire  on  the  waters  together — 
"Artemis  watching  with  a  serene  splendour  of 
scorn  the  battle  of  Titans  and  the  revel  of 
nymphs,  from  her  stainless  and  Olympian  sum- 
mit of  divine  indifferent  light."  This  was  the 
Channel  Passage  of  18.55  which  gave  the  title  and 
a  subject  to  Swinburne's  last  book  of  poems. 
The  scene  was  used  a  third  time  in  A  Study  of 
Shakespeare^  because  he  could  not  forbear  saying 
that  "  the  painter  of  the  storm  in  Pericles  must 
have  shared  the  adventure  and  relished  the 
rapture  of  such  an  hour."  Except  that  he  was 
sailing  from  Ostend,  I  know  nothing  of  the 
travel  which  this  crossing  concluded.  Probably 
it  was  during  the  period  between  Eton  and 
Oxford,  when  Swinburne  was  either  abroad  or 
under  the  tutorship  of  the  distinguished  "  rumi- 
nant "  Stubbs,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Oxford, 
and  then  V^icar  of  Navestock  in  Essex,  where 
the  boy  sometimes  resided  wdth  him. 

In  1857  Swinburne  entered  Balliol  College, 
Oxford,  as  a  Commoner.  Pater,  at  Brasenose, 
who  was  two  years  younger,  was  thus  almost  his 

38 


PREPARATIONS 

exact  contemporary.  William  Morris  had  just 
taken  his  degree.  Jowett,  nearly  twenty  years 
after  his  election  to  a  Fellowship  at  Balliol,  had 
lately  become  Regius  Professor  of  Greek,  only 
to  pay  for  his  religious  liberalism,  at  the  sentence 
of  the  University,  with  the  emoluments  of  his 
office  during  ten  years.  He  became  a  friend  of 
Swinburne's,  travelled  in  England  with  him,  and 
was  a  guest  at  his  father's  house. 

Swinburne  apparently  did  not  become  quite 
friendly  to  the  University,  though  he  remained 
sufficiently  Oxonian  to  enjoy  a  laugh  at  "  certain 
wise  men  of  the  east  of  England — Cantabrigian 
Magi."  In  spite  of  his  scholarship,  he  was 
placed  only  in  the  second  class  in  classical 
Moderations,  earned  no  classical  prizes,  and  never 
took  a  degree ;  but  in  1858  he  had  the  Taylorian 
prize  for  French  and  Itahan.  It  is  clear  that  he 
was  a  very  great  reader,  especially  of  poetry ; 
even  twenty  years  later  he  could  not  really  feel 
that  prose  could  be  as  good  as  verse,  and  he 
wrote  of  the  spring  of  1616  as  "the  darkest 
that  ever  dawned  upon  England  or  the  world  " 
because  it  killed  Shakespeare.  All  young  or 
bold  writers  had  his  heart,  whether  they  were 
lofty  like  JEschylus  and  Dante  and  Milton, 
sweet  like  Sappho,  Catullus,  Villon,  Coleridge, 
Musset  and  Tennyson,  or  sweet  and  lofty  like 
Shelley  and  Marlowe.     After  Shakespeare  and 

39 


A.   C.   SWINIJUUNE 

Hugo,  he  most  loved  Shelley  and  Marlowe, 
most  venerated  Landor.  lie  ehose,  above  all, 
poetry  that  was  in  some  way  adventurous, 
aspiring  even  to  giddiness,  free  and  yet  ex- 
quisite :  whence  he  could  never  fully  admire 
Spenser  or  Keats,  Byron  or  Whitman.  As  an 
older  man  he  turned  round  on  JMusset,  but  as 
a  youth  the  poem  where  the  Frenchman  "  whim- 
pered like  a  whipped  hound  over  the  cruel  work 
of  men  who  shook  the  Cross  and  took  away  the 
Saviour"  seemed  a  genuine  product  of  sincere 
and  tender  inspiration,  though  he  could  not 
look  back  to  that  period  without  "an  inward 
smile."  New  English  poetry  by  itself — not  to 
speak  of  the  personalities  of  the  two  living 
poets  then  in  Oxford,  his  friends  Rossetti  and 
William  INIorris — was  enough  to  produce  his 
"profound  inattention  to  lectures  on  Aldrich's 
Logic."  Tennyson's  finest  short  poems  had 
appeared :  Maud  was  new  and  unpopular,  but 
admired  by  Swinburne.  Browning  was  known 
by  his  Pauline,  Bells  and, Pomegranates,  Sordello, 
and  the  plays ;  Arnold  by  his  Strayed  Reveller, 
Empedocles,  and  Scholar-Gypsy.  Morris's  De- 
fence of  Guenevere  belonged  to  1858.  In  France 
Victor  Hugo's  Chatiments,  Contemplations,  and 
Legende  Des  Siecles,  Gautier's  Emaux  et  Cam^^es, 
were  new.  Musset  and  Beranger  were  just  dead 
(1857) :  Catullus  and  JNIarlowe  and  Shelley  were 

40 


PREPARATIONS 

in  their  freshest  youth.  These  were  days  prob- 
ably when  he  would  have  exclaimed  with 
Musset : 

Grece,  6  mere  des  arts,  terra  d'idolatrie 

De  mes  veux  insenses  eternelle  patrie, 

J'etais  ne  pour  ces  temps  ou  les  fleurs  de  ton  front 

Couronnaient  dans  les  mers  I'azur  de  1' Hellespont. 

Je  suis  un  citoyen  de  tes  siecles  antiques  ;  .  .  . 

The  conscious  Pagan  of  France  emphasized 
the  lesson  of  Greece ;  with  Theophile  Gautier 
he  learned  to  rebuke  the  monk  for  anathematis- 
ing the  body,  "  votre  corps,  modele  par  le  doigt 
de  Dieu  meme,  que  Jesus-Christ,  son  fils,  a 
daigne  revetir  " : 

L'esprit  est  immortel,  on  ne  pent  le  nier ; 
Mais  dirCj  comme  vous,  que  la  chair  est  infame, 
Statuaire  divine,  c'est  te  calomnier. 

Swinburne  was  never  to  calumniate  the  divine 
sculptor  in  his  capacity  of  sculptor.  Gautier 
no  doubt  helped  him  to  be  one  of  those  who 
must  thrust  their  hands  into  the  side  of  beauty, 
who  love  above  all  whatsoever  beautiful  things 
are  hard  and  clear  and  bright,  whatsoever  are 
to  be  seen  with  the  eye  and  touched  with  lips 
and  hands.  He  chose  the  company  of  the  young, 
the  glad  and  the  lovely. 

In  his  first  year  at  Oxford  he  began  writing 
and  publishing.     The  "  Undergraduate  Papers  " 

41 


A.   C.    SW  INBURNE 

of  1857  und  1858  contiiin  botli  verse  Jiiul  prose 
by  Swinburne.  Writing  on  tlie  dranialists 
Marlowe  and  Webster,  he  expressed  his  prefer- 
ence for  strong,  fresh  minds  "from  which  the 
stamp  of  a  stern  and  glorious  age  was  not  yet 
outworn,"  to  those  wlio,  like  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  "  mix  with  the  very  sources  of  poetry 
that  faint  false  sweetness  which  enervates  the 
mind  and  clogs  the  taste  of  the  reader."  He 
praised  the  "  rapid  rhythm  and  gorgeous  luxuries 
of  Hero  and  Leander,"  and  the  poet  who  "  did 
justice  once  for  all  to  that  much  misused  and 
belied  thing,  the  purely  sensuous  and  outward 
side  of  love."  He  read  with  delight  I^eander's 
reply  to  Hero,  the  sacred  nun  of  Venus  : 

The  rites 
In  which  Love's  beauteous  Empress  most  delights, 
Are  banquets,  Doric  music,  midnight  revel, 
Plays,  masks,  and  all  that  stern  age  counteth  evil. 
Thee  as  a  holy  idiot  doth  she  scorn. 
For  thou  in  vowing  chastity  hast  sworn 
To  rob  her  name  and  honour,  and  thereby 
Commit' st  a  sin  far  worse  than  perjury. 
Even  sacrilege  against  her  Deity, 
Through  regular  and  formal  purity  : 
To  expiate  which  sin,  kiss  and  shake  hands. 
Such  sacrifice  as  this  Venus  demands. 

He  beheved  that  "wise  enjoyment,  noble  and 
healthy  teaching,  lies  for  all   in  the  forgotten 

42 


PREPARATIONS 

writings  of  the  early  masters,"  and  concluded 
with  some  original  verses  : 

Honour  them  now  (ends  my  allocution) 

Not  confer  your  degree  when  the  folks  leave  college. 

His  poem,  Queen  Yseult,  in  the  same  number 
of  "  Undergraduate  Papers,"  shows  the  influence 
of  Morris's  as  yet  unpublished  early  poems,  both 
in  style  and  subject.  Tennyson's  Idylls  did  not 
appear  until  1859.  The  poem  opens  with  the 
death  of  Tristram's  mother,  Blancheflour : 

There  men  found  her  as  they  sped 
Very  beautiful  and  dead, 
In  the  lilies  white  and  red. 

And  beside  her  lying  there. 
Found  a  manchild  strong  and  fair 
Lain  among  the  lilies  bare.  .   .   . 

And  for  the  sweet  look  he  had, 
Weeping  not  but  very  sad, 
Tristram  by  his  name  they  bade. 

The  first  and  only  Canto  ends  with  Tristram's 
embassage  to  fetch  Yseult : 

Spake  the  King  so  lean  and  cold, 
"She  hath  name  of  honour  old, 
Yseult  queen,  the  hair  of  gold. 

All  her  limbs  are  fair  and  strong. 
All  her  face  is  sti-aight  and  long. 
And  her  talk  is  as  a  song. 

And  faint  lines  of  colour  stripe 
(As  spilt  wine  that  one  should  wipe) 
All  her  golden  hair  cornripe. 
43 


A.    C.   SWINBURNE 

Drawn  like  red  {^old  cars  that  stand 
In  I  he  yellow  sunnner  land  ; 
Arrow-straight  her  perfect  hand. 

And  her  eyes  like  river-lakes 
Where  a  gloomy  glory  shakes 
Which  the  happy  sunset  makes. 

Her  shall  Tristram  go  to  bring, 
With  a  gift  of  some  rich  thing 
Fit  to  free  a  prisoned  King." 

As  Sir  Mark  said,  it  was  done  ; 
And  ere  set  the  morrow's  sun, 
Tristram  the  good  knight  was  gone. 

Forth  to  Ireland  bade  he  come. 
Forth  across  the  grey  sea  foam, 
All  to  bring  Queen  Yseult  home. 

The  next  number  proved  that  Swinburne  had 
not  surrendered  the  "  merry  madness "  of 
youth  to  write  Queen  Yseult^  for  it  contained 
a  review  of  the  imaginary  "  Monomaniac's 
Tragedy  and  Other  Poems  of  Ernest  Whel- 
drake,  author  of  Eve  :  A  Mystery."  "  Eve," 
says  the  reviewer,  "  was  anatomized  '  with  a 
bitter  and  severe  dehght '  by  all  the  critics  who 
noticed  it  with  the  exception  (we  beheve)  of 
Mr.  Wheldrake  himself."  He  quotes  short 
passages  to  show  Belial  blaspheming  and  dwell- 
ing on  "  unbecoming  topics,"  like  "  wine- 
dishevelled  tresses,"  "  globed  sapphires  of 
liquescent  eyes,  warmed  with  prenatal  influx 
of  rich   love,"   "  luscious    sweetnesses    of    vin- 

44 


PREPARATIONS 

tage-tinctured  raiment."  The  hero  of  the 
"Monomaniac's  Tragedy,"  who  is  engaged  in 
writing  "  Iscariot :  A  Tragedy,"  has  broken  into 
his  brother's  house  and  wrung  a  nephew's  neck 
in  order  to  gain  experience  of  the  feeUngs  of 
thieves  and  murderers.  It  cannot  be  complained 
that  the  fun  is  long  drawn  out,  when  the  same 
short  review  gives  as  a  specimen  of  Wheldrake's 
writing  a  poem  on  Louis  Napoleon  which  Swin- 
burne trusts  will  atone  in  imperial  circles  for 
Hugo's  Chatiments : 

He  stands  upon  a  rock  that  cleaves  the  sheath 

Of  blue  sea  like  a  sword  of  upward  foam  ; 

Along  the  washing  waste  flows  far  beneath 

A  palpitation  of  senescent  storm. 

He,  the  Lethean  pilot  of  grim  death, 

Utters  by  fits  a  very  potent  breath. 

He  is  the  apex  of  the  focussed  ages. 

The  crown  of  all  those  labouring  powers  that  warm 

Earth's  red  hot  core,  when  scoriae  sorrow  rages. 

He  is  the  breath  Titanic — the  supreme 

Development  of  some  presolar  dream. 

Owls,  dogs,  that  bellow  at  him  !  is  he  not 

More  strong  than  ye  t     His  intermittent  love 

The  measure  of  your  wretched  hate  keeps  hot. 

Ye  are  below  him — for  he  is  above. 

At  least  this  "review"  seems  to  foretell  Swin- 
burne's own  poems  on  "unbecoming  topics," 
the  malicious  hoaxing  irony  of  his  replies  to 
Robert  Buchanan's  pseudonymous  attack,  his 
much  furious  and  scornful  abuse  of  Napoleon 

the  Little. 

45 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

Swinburne  liiid  gone  up  to  Oxford  witli  a  very 
complete  Republicanism  I'ounded  on  the  words 
of  Plutarch  and  Milton,  Shelley,  J^andor,  and 
Mazzini  ;  and  Orsini's  attempt  on  Louis 
Napoleon  is  said  to  have  moved  him  to  uphold 
"  the  virtue  of  tyrannicide  "  in  public.  He  has 
recorded  how  as  a  freshman  in  the  fifth  or  sixth 
year  of  Louis  Napoleon's  "  empire  of  cutpurses 
and  cut-throats  "  he  had  been  smiled  on  tolerantly 
by  his  elders  for  believing  in  "  the  principles  and 
teaching  of  men  who  ventured  to  believe  in  the 
realization  of  Italian  unity."  The  Society  of 
the  Friends  of  Italy  had  just  been  reconstituted, 
and  Walter  Savage  I^andor  was  one  of  them. 
England  was  disturbed,  chiefly  through  the 
agitation  of  Mazzini,  Garibaldi,  and  Kossuth, 
by  a  considerable  feeUng  for  ItaHan  unity,  against 
Austria ;  but,  like  Swinburne's  Oxford  audience, 
Carlyle  was  impatient  with  Mazzini's  "  Republi- 
canism," his  "  Progress,"  and  other  "  Rousseau 
fanaticisms."  To  Swinburne  the  movement  for 
Italian  unity  was  like  the  movements  celebrated 
by  Shelley  in  the  Ode  to  Liberty,  the  Ode  to 
Naples,  and  Hellas.  Phrases  like  Mazzini's 
"God  and  the  People,"  "God,  the  People, 
Love  and  Liberty,"  the  grand  style  of  his  sum- 
mons "  to  a  task  like  the  tasks  of  God,  the 
creation  of  a  people,"  his  vision  of  the  future 
and  "  the  people  rising  in  its  majesty,  brothers 

46 


PREPARATIONS 

in  one  faith,  one  bond  of  equality  and  love,  one 
ideal  of  citizen  virtue  that  ever  grows  in  beauty 
and  might,"  his  clear  cry  that  "  there  can  be  no 
moderation  between  good  and  evil,  truth  and 
error,  progress  and  reaction  "—these  words  came 
to  unite  in  Swinburne's  heart  with  Shelley's  : 

And  thou^  lost  Paradise  of  this  divine 

And  glorious  world  !  thou  flowery  wilderness  ! 

Thou  island  of  eternity  !  thou  shrine 

Where  Desolation,  clothed  with  loveliness, 

Worships  the  thing  thou  wert !     O  Italy, 

Gather  thy  blood  into  thy  heart ;  repress 

The  beasts  who  make  their  dens  thy  sacred  palaces. 

Swinburne  could  spend  his  fieriest  intellectual 
emotions  on  the  Italian  I'isorgimento  without 
throwing  them  away.  Enthusiasm  for  a  genuine 
social  movement  never  yet  failed  to  be  repaid, 
if  only  with  increase  of  enthusiasm ;  to  Swin- 
burne it  gave  a  material  that  could  arouse  and 
match  his  swiftest  and  lordliest  measures.  After 
his  visit  to  Italy  in  1864  he  called  her  "my 
second  mother  country." 

His  first  book,  published  in  the  year  of  his 
leaving  Oxford,  1860,  had,  however,  httle  enough 
of  liberty  and  republicanism.  It  consisted  of 
two  plays — one.  The  Queen  Mother,  ending  in 
the  Massacre  of  Bartholomew,  and  having  for 
its  characters  Catherine  de  Medici,  Charles  IX 
of  France,  Henry  of  Navarre,  Catholic  and 
Huguenot  nobles,  and  certain  maids-of-honour  ; 

47 


A.   C.   SWINBURNE 

the  other,  Rnsavwnd,  depictincr  tlie  last  days  of 
the  love  between  Henry  1 1  of  Kn^^lund  and  fair 
Rosamond.  Both  are  distinguished  and  marred 
by  a  too  eurious  Elizabethanism  of  style,  as 
where  King  Charles  says  in  The  Queen  Mother: 

Or  now,  this  gold  that  makes  me  up  a  king, 
This  apprehensive  note  and  mark  of  time. 
This  token'd  kingdom,  this  well-tested  worth, 
Wherein  my  brows  exult  and  are  begirt 
With  the  brave  sum  and  sense  of"  kingliness, 
To  have  this  melted  from  a  narrow  head 
Or  broken  on  the  bare  disfeatured  brows, 
And  marr'd  i'  the  very  feature  and  fair  place 
Where  it  looked  nobly — were  this  no  shame  to  us  ? 

Sometimes  the  copy  is  admirable,  sometimes 
obseure.  Browning  was  a  better  influence,  lead- 
ing the  young  poet  to  hnes  hke  those  spoken  by 
Rosamond : 

Who  calls  it  spring  ? 
Simply  this  winter  plays  at  red  and  green. 
Clean  white  no  colour  for  me,  did  they  say  ? 
I  never  loved  white  roses  much  ;  but  see 
How  the  wind  drenches  the  low  lime-branches 
With  shaken  silver  in  the  rainiest  leaves. 
Mere  winter,  winter. 

He  adopts  even  the  Browningesque  "  suppose 
you,"  in  a  passage  where  he  takes  leave  to  use 
almost  more  than  the  most  Elizabethan  licence 
with  lines  like : 

Lost  me  my  soul  with  a  mask,  a  most  ungracious  one. 
48 


PREPARATIONS 

He  showed  the  influence  of  Rossetti  in  the  end- 
ings of  several  such  hnes  as — 

Painted  with  colours  for  his  ease-taking. 

Both  plays  have  songs,  The  Queen  Mother  in 
French,  Rosamond  in  archaic  English.  Thus 
early  was  Swinburne  an  excellent  verse-master 
outside  his  own  tongue. 

The  Queen  Motlier  holds  the  attention  chiefly 
through  the  character  of  Denise,  the  maid  of 
honour,  Charles's  mistress,  who  tries  to  per- 
suade the  king  against  the  massacre,  and  at 
last  goes  out  in  her  madness  into  the  bloody 
streets  and  is  killed.  There  are  careful  touches 
of  character  on  many  pages,  as  where  Catherine 
says  in  the  midst  of  the  massacre : 

I  am  hot  only  in  the  palm  of  the  hands. 

Do  you  not  think,  sir,  some  of  these  dead  men. 

Being  children,  dreamed  perhaps  of  this  .^ 

But  the  play  is  more  noticeable  for  the  sympa- 
thetic treatment  of  the  amorousness  and  blood- 
thirstiness  of  a  palace  which,  he  said  at  a  later 
date,  in  the  Appendix  to  Mary  Stuart,  "it 
would  be  flattery  to  call  a  brothel  or  a  slaughter- 
house," for  "its  virtues  were  homicide  and 
adultery."  Denise  is  "a  white  long  woman 
with  thick  hair  " ;  and  "  not  the  lightest  thing 
she  has  that  hair,"  says  Margaret  Valois.  To 
Marshal  Tavannes  the  girl  is  "a  costly  piece 
D  49 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

of  white."  She  tells  the  King  that  she  could 
kill  him  "  here  between  the  eyes,"  rather  than 
lose  his  face  to  touch  and  his  hair  to  twist  curls 
in  :  she  reminds  him  of  how  he  bit  her  above 
the  shoulder.  During  the  massacre  "twenty 
with  sweet  laughing  mouths  "  gathered  about  a 
corpse  to  abuse  it  with  "  Heers  and  gibes  "  that 
made  the  murderer  merry.  "  Their  blood,"  says 
a  noble : 

Their  l^lood  is  apt  to  heats  so  mutable 
As  in  their  softer  bodies  overgrow 
The  temper  of  sweet  reason,  and  confound 
All  order  but  their  blood. 

Yolande,  with  an  old  man's  brain  "  in  her  most 
supple  body,"  is  one,  thinks  Catherine,  who  will 
not  "  wry  her  mouth  on  tasting  blood."  Charles 
practised  as  a  boy  to  "  pinch  out  life  by  nips  in 
some  sick  beast,"  likes  the  smell  of  a  man's 
blood  :  "  it  stings  and  makes  one  weep."  Denise 
alone  is  pitiful,  telling  her  lover  that  the  body 
of  the  worst  man  is  compounded  of  love  and 
pain,  like  himself,  and  "was  worth  God's  time 
to  finish." 

Rosdmond  is  far  less  a  play.  In  The  Queen 
Mother  Catherine  talks  about  herself  and  the 
mouth  which  "has  been  a  gracious  thing  for 
kisses  to  fall  near " :  in  Rosamond  the  best 
passages  are  where  Rosamond  describes  herself, 
or  where  Henry  or  Eleanor  describes  Rosamond 

50 


PREPARATIONS 

to  her  face.  Rosamond,  indeed,  sees  herself 
already  as  the  legendary  beauty ;  she  speaks  of 
herself  as  having  been  in  turn  Helen,  Cressida, 
Guenevere  ;  before  the  King  comes  she  says  she 
will  sleep,  in  order  to  have  "  the  sweet  of  sleep  " 
on  her  face  "to  touch  his  senses  with."  The 
result  is  a  languid,  luxurious,  impression  of  the 
"fair  fool  with  her  soft  shameful  mouth,"  and 
the  reader  agrees  with  Bouchard  that  "being 
fair,  a  woman  is  worth  pains  to  see."  As 
Rosamond  is  amorous  and  gentle,  the  Queen 
is  amorous  and  cruel,  loving  well  to  feel  pain 
and  to  inflict  it  on  the  shrinking  hated  mistress. 
Cruelty  and  amorousness  are  mixed  also  in 
the  boy  Arthur's  story,  how  he  thrust  himself 
through  the  lattice  to  see  a  woman  with  a 
white,  smooth  neck  and  wonderful  red  mouth, 
and  how  the  thought  of  her  made  him  shake 
in  sleep ;  but  his  master  Hugh  beat  him  for  it 
with  a  switch  like  a  beehive  let  loose — he 
could  touch  separately  the  twelve  prints  of 
"the  sharp,  small  suckers."  Perhaps  Swin- 
burne had  become  interested  in  the  birch  at 
Eton :  that  he  was  interested  is  quite  clear 
from  the  frequent  mention  of  it  in  Loves  Cross 
Currents,  where  the  boy  Reginald — afterwards 
a  writer  of  verse  very  much  like  Swinburne's — 
"  relished  the  subject  of  flagellation  as  few  men 
relish  rare  wine." 

51 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

Tlie  effect  of  EosamomJ  is  more  like  that  of 
such  a  narrative  as  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes  than 
of  a  play.  It  is  stuffed  with  the  pleasantness 
and  pitifulness  of  love  among  people  who  seem 
to  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  love,  unless  it  be 
to  hate.  Hut  it  is  love,  too,  whicli  the  lovers 
know  as  sin,  though  Rosamond  regards  her 
beauty  as  "part  of  the  perfect  witness  of  the 
world,  how  good  it  is." 

I  that  liave  held  a  land  between  twin  lips 
And  turned  large  England  to  a  little  kiss ; 
God  thinks  not  of  me  as  contemptible. 

The  poet  who  made  her  thought  not  of  her 
as  contemptible,  for  evidently  he  was  one  of 
love's  lovers,  loving  it  for  its  own  sake  and 
because  it  gives  the  keenest  relish  to  all  things 
in  Nature  and  men  and  women.  The  book  is 
rich  enough  in  the  luxury  of  love  to  stop  any 
complaint  against  the  form  of  drama,  but  it 
can  hardly  have  foretold  dramatic  success.  It 
is  a  choice  exercise  in  English,  French,  and 
Latin,  for  those  that  can  enjoy  such.  For  the 
rest,  it  seldom  misses  the  sweetness  of  the  song 
of  Constance : 

Sweet,  for  God's  love  I  bid  you  kiss  right  close 
On  mouth  and  cheek,  because  you  see  my  rose 

Has  died  that  got  no  kisses  of  the  rain ; 
So  will  I  sing  to  sweeten  my  sweet  mouth. 
So  will  I  braid  my  thickest  hair  to  smooth, 

And  then — I  need  not  call  you  love  again. 
52 


PREPARATIONS 

The  blank  verse  goes  on  and  on  with  little 
purpose  but  gathering  sweets,  and  the  rewards  of 
the  gathering  are  undeniable.  They  were  extra- 
ordinary in  a  man  of  twenty-two  or  twenty-three. 
The  performance  might  surprise  any  but  the 
poet's  friends.  Among  them  his  reputation  as  a 
poet  and  a  brilliant  uncontrolled  human  being 
was  exceptional.  He  had  become  so  worship- 
ping a  disciple  of  Dante  Rossetti  that  Burne- 
Jones  said :  "  Now  we  were  four  in  company, 
not  three,"  Morris  being  the  other.  "  Courteous, 
affectionate,  and  unsuspicious,"  he  was  "  faithful 
beyond  most  people  to  those  he  really  loved." 
Thus  was  deepened  his  "  lifelong  delight  in  the 
forces  of  an  art  which  is  not  my  own,  quickened 
by  the  intercourse  of  many  years  with  eminent 
artists.  ..."  He  continually  saw  these  men, 
going  even  three  times  a  day  to  Burne-Jones 
and  often  taking  poems  to  repeat.  He  was  a 
noticeable  small  man  with  a  "glorious  abundance" 
of  "  fiery  "  or  "reddish  yellow"  or  "orange"  hair 
and  "  blue-grey  "  or  "  clear  green  "  eyes  softened 
by  thick  brown  lashes.  While  he  was  repeating 
poetry  his  eyes  were  lifted  in  a  "  rapt  unconscious 
gaze,"  his  head  hung  on  one  side,  his  body 
shook,  his  high  -  pitched  voice  expressed  the 
utmost  fervour  and  excitement,  and  "in  the 
concentrated  emphasis  of  his  slow  utterance  he 
achieved  something  like  a  Delphic  ecstasy,  the 

53 


A.    C.    SWINHURNE 

tninsfiiTurution  of  tlic  l*ythia  quivering  on  her 
tripod."  The  halo  of  hair  was  sometimes 
'*  gravely  or  waggishly "  waved  at  the  com- 
pany. He  might  also  "jump  about  the  room 
in  a  manner  somewhat  embarrassing  to  the 
listener."  He  was  always  restless,  never 
standing  still ;  his  walk  was  turned  into  a 
dance ;  even  sitting,  he  moved  his  wrists,  per- 
haps his  feet  also,  as  if  he  were  keeping  time 
with  some  "inner  rhythm  of  excitement." 
Reciting  or  not,  he  was  continually  subject  to  a 
*' violent  elevation  of  spirits,"  yet  "the  extra- 
ordinary spasmodic  action "  accompanying  his 
paroxysms  of  excitement  seemed  to  produce  no 
fatigue,  but  changed  into  a  "graceful  and 
smiling  calm  ...  his  eyes  fixed  in  a  sort  of 
trance,  and  only  his  lips  shifting  and  shivering  a 
little,  without  a  sound." 

His  conversation,  rapid  and  yet  not  voluble, 
was  "  very  splendid  in  quality,"  always  vigorous, 
often  violent  and  often  biting,  but  always 
sparing  an  absent  friend.  It  was  made  the 
more  remarkable  by  his  memory.  When 
Rossetti  buried  his  poems  with  his  wife  (1862), 
Swinburne's  memory  kept  many  of  them  alive. 
In  an  account  of  an  evening  at  Fryston  with 
Lord  Houghton  it  has  been  recorded  how  the 
young  poet,  the  only  unknown  in  the  party, 
made  an  impression : 

54 


PREPARATIONS 

He  was  silent  till  the  middle  of  dinner,  when  some- 
body raised  a  literary  ((uestion,  touching  Sophocles  or 
Shakespeare.  Then  he  began  ;  and  from  his  first  words 
his  hearers  knew  they  had  to  do  with  a  master.  Host 
and  guests  played  up  to  him,  and  he  held  them  spell- 
bound. "  We  dined,  we  smoked,  he  talked,  and  we  were 
enthralled,"  says,  in  effect,  the  writer ;  and  at  midnight 
I  remember  we  all  adjourned  to  my  room,  where  we 
sat  about  on  chairs  or  on  the  bed  listening  while  this 
amazing  young  poet  poured  out  page  after  page  of  the 
Elizabethans  and  page  after  page  of  his  own  unpublished 
verse  till  two  in  the  morning. 

To  one  who  was  not  overwhelmed  by  him  he 
appeared  "  short,  with  shoulders  that  sloped 
more  than  a  woman's,  from  which  rose  a  long," 
but  not  (it  is  also  said)  a  "slender  neck,  sur- 
mounted by  an  enormous  head  "  with  too  small 
a  chin.  "  The  cranium  was  out  of  all  proportion 
to  the  rest  of  ^h^  structure.  His  spine  was 
rigid,  and  though  he  often  bowed  the  heaviness 
of  his  head,  lasso  papavera  collo,  he  never 
seemed  to  bend  his  back.  Except  in  conse- 
quence of  a  certain  physical  weakness" — pre- 
sumably one  of  those  "  follies  of  Bohemianism  " 
which  are  "  dangerous  to  health  and  life " — 
"which  probably  may,  in  more  philosophical 
days,  come  to  be  accounted  for  and  palliated — 
except  when  suffering  from  this  external  cause, 
he  seemed  immune  from  all  the  maladies  that 
pursue  mankind.      He  did  not  know  fatigue ; 

55 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

his  agility  iind  brightness  were  ahnost  mechani- 
cal. I  never  heard  him  complain  of  a  headache 
or  a  toothache.  He  required  very  little  sleep, 
and  occasionally  when  1  have  parted  from  him 
in  the  evening  after  saying  good  night,  he  has 
simply  sat  back  in  the  deep  sofa  in  his  sitting- 
room,  his  little  feet  close  together,  his  arms 
against  his  side,  folded  in  his  frock-coat  like  a 
grasshopper  in  its  wing-covers,  and  fallen  asleep, 
apparently  for  the  night,  before  I  could  blow 
out  the  candles  and  steal  forth  from  the  doors." 
Out  of  doors  he  was  like  "  something  blown 
before  a  wind,"  having  the  movements  of  a 
somnambulist.  I  seem  to  see  him  in  Camber's 
description  of  his  brother  Locrine  : 

My  brother  is  a  prince  of  paramours — 

Eyes  coloured  like  the  springtide  sea  and  hair 

Bright  as  with  fire  of  sundawn.  .  .  . 

In  his  circle  he  was  already  known  by  many 
of  the  poems  afterwards  printed  in  Poems  and 
Ballads  ;  for  these,  he  said,  in  the  dedication  of 
1865,  came  from  seven  years  of  his  life. 

The  youngest  were  born  of  boy's  pastime, 
The  eldest  are  young. 

Several  appeared  in  The  Spectator  in  1862, 
including  Faustinc,  forty  verses  of  Faustine — 
tcmpora  muiantur — down  to  the  last.  During 
tliat  winter  he  recited  the  Laus  J'^eneris  on  the 


PREPARATIONS 

sands  of  Tynemouth  in  the  course  of  a  visit  to 
William  Bell  Scott,  as  he  recited  "  When  the 
hounds  of  spring  are  on  winter's  traces  "  on  the 
road  between  Newport  and  Shorwell  in  the 
Isle  of  Wight.  Like  Rossetti  he  was  writing 
bouts-rimes  and  Limericks.  He  was  also  ex- 
perimenting in  metre,  and  one  Sunday  morning, 
having  looked  at  The  Rhythm  of  Bernard  de 
Morlaix  and  an  English  translation,  he  wrote 
twenty-six  lines  of  "a  projected  version  of 
Bernard's  Rhythm,"  of  which  these  are  a 
specimen : 

0  land  without  guilty  strong  city  safe-built  in  a  marvellous 

place, 

1  cling  to  thee,  ache  for  thee,  sing  to  thee,  wake  for  thee, 

watch  for  thy  face  : 
Full  of  cursing  and  strife  are  the  days  of  my  life ;  with  their 

sins  they  are  fed. 
Out  of  sin  is  the  root,  unto  sin  is  the  fruit,  in  their  sins  they 

are  dead. 

He  could  turn  aside,  as  he  did  in  1864,  to 
write  a  Morality^  the  acting  of  which  formed  the 
chief  part  of  The  Children  of  the  Chapel,  a  story 
by  his  cousin,  now  Mrs.  Disney  Leith.  The 
whole  story  was  composed  and  written  under 
his  eye.  The  morality.  The  Pilgrim  of  Pleasure, 
abounds  in  sweet  characteristic  verses,  as  where 
Youth  speaks : 

57 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

We  have  f^one  by  many  latuls,  and  many  grievous  ways, 
And  yet  have  we  not  lound  this  Pleasure  all  these  days. 
Sometimes  a  lij^htenin-^  all  about  her  have  we  seen, 
A  fluttering  of  her  garments  among  the  fieldes  green  ; 
Sometimes  the  waving  of  her  hair  that  is  right  sweet, 
A  lifting  of  her  eyelids,  or  a  shining  of  her  feet, 
Or  either  in  sleeping  or  in  waking  have  we  heard 
A  rustling  of  raiment  or  a  whispering  of  a  word, 
Or  a  noise  of  pleasant  water  running  over  a  waste  place. 
Yet  have  I  not  beheld  her,  nor  known  her  very  face. 

He  was  thus  already  a  master  of  those  means, 
such  as  the  frequent  use  of  "a,"  "the,"  "of," 
"  or,"  "  in,"  and  of  participial  nouns  like  "  light- 
ening," by  which  the  language  submitted  itself 
to  all  his  love  of  metre.  The  piece  is  purest 
Swinburne,  nowhere  more  so  than  in  the  final 
triumph  of  Death : 

Alas  !  your  kingdom  and  lands  !  alas  !  your  men  and  their 

might ! 
Alas  the  strength  of  your  hands  and  the  days  of  your  vain 

delight ! 
Alas  I     the    words    that   were   spoken,    sweet    words    on    a 

pleasant  tongue ! 
Alas!    your   harps   that  are    broken,   the    harps    that   were 

carven  and  strung ! 
Alas  !  the  light  in  your  eyes,  the  gold  in  your  golden  hair ! 
Alas  !  your  sayings  wise,  and  the  goodly  things  ye  were  ! 
Alas !  your  glory  I  alas !    the   sound  of  your  names   among 

men  ! 
Behold  it  is  come  to  pass,  ye  shall  sleep  and  arise  not  again. 
Dust  shall  fall  on  your  face,  and  dust  shall  hang  in  your  hair  ; 
Ye  shall  sleep  without  shifting  of  place,  and  shall  be  no 

more  as  ye  were  ; 

58 


PREPARATIONS 

Ye  shall  never  open  your  mouth  ;  ye  shall  never  lift  up  your 

head ; 
Ye  shall  look  not  to  north  or  to  south ;   life  is  done ;  and 

behold  you  are  dead  ! 
With  your  hand  ye  shall  not  threat ;  with  your  throat  ye 

shall  not  sing. 
Ye,  ye  that  ai-e  living  yet,  ye  shall  each  be  a  grievous  thing. 
Ye  shall  each  fare  underground,  ye  shall  lose  both  speech 

and  breath ; 
Without  sight  ye  shall  see,  without  sound  ye  shall  hear,  and 

shall  know  I  am  Death. 

The  repetitions,  the  rhetorical  and  Biblical 
stateliness,  the  splendid  farewells  to  what  was 
splendid,  are  admirable  enough,  yet  seem  to 
reveal  that  the  effort  was  an  exercise  and  an 
experiment  only.  The  archaic  song  of  Vain 
Delight,  in  this  form : 

I  am  so  noble  a  queen 
I  have  a  right  little  teen, 
I  were  a  goodly  samite  green. 
Fresh  flowers  and  red. 

No  man  so  sad  there  is 
But  if  I  will  him  kiss 
With  my  good  sweet  lips,  I  wis. 
He  shall  well  be  sped. 

Whoso  that  will  me  see 
He  shall  have  great  joy  of  me. 
And  merry  man  shall  he  be 
Till  he  be  dead — 

this  is  as  good  as  Swinburne  always  was  at  an 
old  form  or  dialect  or  foreign  tongue.  The 
power  to  do  it  is  the  only  originality  shown. 

59 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

He  had  alrendy  bc<^un  to  write  on  Blake  in 
18G3 ;  "•  meanwhile  some  last  word  has  to  be 
said  concerning  Blake's  life  and  death,"  he  writes, 
still  with  something  of  Carlyle  in  his  accent. 
This  book,  with  its  necessary  accounts  of  pic- 
tures, encouraged  Swinburne,  if  he  had  need  of 
encouragement,  in  pictorial  description.  Many 
of  his  translations  from  pictures  are  as  good  as 
possible  in  a  concentrated  style,  owing  a  good 
deal  to  Ruskin,  which  did  not  forbid  Swinburne 
the  rhythms,  the  language,  or  the  alliteration  of 
his  verse,  as  for  example  in  IFilliam  Blake: 

Dante  and  Virgil,  standing  in  a  niche  of  rifted  rock 
faced  by  another  cliff'  up  and  down  wliich  a  reptile  crowd 
of  spirits  swarms  and  sinks,  looking  down  on  the  grovel- 
ling and  swine-like  flocks  of  Malebolge ;  lying  tumbled 
about  the  loathsome  land  in  hateful  heaps  of  leprous 
flesh  and  dishevelled  deformity,  with  limbs  contorted, 
clawing  nails,  and  staring  horror  of  hair  and  eyes :  one 
figure  thrown  down  in  a  corner  of  the  crowded  cliff-side, 
her  form  and  face  drowned  in  an  overflow  of  ruined 
raining  tresses. 

One  page  in  this  book  alone  shows  into  what 
rhythms  his  thought  ran  when  phrases  Uke  the 
following  are  easily  to  be  found  : 

"  With  limbs  contorted,  clawing  nails,  and  staring 
horror  of  hair  and  eyes." 

"  Amid  heaving  and  glaring  motion  of  vapour  and  fire." 

60 


PREPARATIONS 

"The  dark  hard  strength  and  sweep  of  its  sterile 
ridges." 

"  Washed  about  with  surf  and  froth  of  tideless  fire,  and 
heavily  laden  with  the  lurid  languor  of  hell." 

His  descriptions  of  Rossetti's  and  Burne-Jones' 
pictures  in  Essays  and  Studies  could  not  fail  to 
confirm  the  habit  and  to  impress  his  mind  still 
more  deeply  with  Rossetti's  women,  such  as 
LiUth : 

"  Clothed  in  soft  white  garments,  she  draws  out  through 
a  comb  the  heavy  mass  of  hair  like  thick  spun  gold  to 
fullest  length ;  her  head  leans  back  half  sleepily,  superb 
and  satiate  with  its  own  beauty ;  [compare  "  Faustine  "] 
the  eyes  are  languid,  without  love  in  them  or  hate ; 
the  sweet  luxurious  mouth  has  the  patience  of  pleasure 
fulfilled  and  complete,  the  warm  repose  of  passion  sure  of 
its  delight.  .  .  .  The  sleepy  splendour  of  the  picture  is  a 
fit  raiment  for  the  idea  incarnate  of  faultless  fleshy  beauty 
and  peril  of  pleasure  unavoidable." 

"  Peril  of  pleasure  unavoidable  "  might  have 
been  the  last  line  of  a  sonnet  in  Rossetti's 
manner.  Swinburne  must  have  known  well 
Rossetti's  poems  on  pictures :  we  know  that  he 
knew  and  admired  that  Song  of  the  Bower  which 
seems  to  point  us  back  to  Browning  and  on  to 
Swinburne : 

.  .  .  Shall  I  not  one  day  remember  thy  bower, 
One  day  when  all  days  are  one  to  me  ? 
Thinking  "  I  stirred  not,  and  yet  had  the  power  1 " 
Yearning,  "  Ah  God,  if  again  it  might  be  !  " 
61 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

Peace,  peace  !  such  a  small  lamp  illumes,  on  this  high- 
way. 
So  dimly  so  few  steps  in  front  of  my  feet, 
Yet  shows  me  that  her  way  is  parted  from  my  way.  .  .  . 
Out  of  sight,  beyond  light,  at  what  goal  may  we 
meet? 

If  he  needed  incitement  to  a  Biblical  accent, 
he  found  it  in  the  picture  of  "  The  Card  Dealer," 
and  something  else  which  he  absorbed  and 
changed : 

Whom  plays  she  with  ?  with  thee,  who  lov'st 

These  gems  upon  her  hand  ; 
With  me,  who  search  her  secret  brows  ; 

With  all  men,  bless'd  or  bann'd. 
We  play  together,  she  and  we. 

Within  a  vain  strange  land  : 

A  land  without  any  order, 

Day  even  as  night  (one  saith) 
Where  who  lieth  down  ariseth  not 

Nor  the  sleeper  awakeneth  ; 
A  land  of  darkness  as  darkness  itself 

And  of  the  shadow  of  death. 

What  be  her  cards  you  ask  .''     Even  these  : 

The  heart,  that  doth  but  crave 
More,  having  fed  ;  the  diamond, 

Skilled  to  make  base  seem  brave  ; 
The  club,  for  smiting  in  the  dark  ; 

The  spade,  to  dig  a  grave. 

Though  Morris  was  no  painter,  the  influence 
of  his  poetry,  the  mingled  violence  and  dreami- 

62 


PREPARATIONS 

ness  of  life  in  the  land  of  his  early  poems,  or, 
rather,  that  arras 

Where  the  wind  set  the  silken  kings  asway 

could  not  but  second  the  influence  of  painting. 
The  young  poet  might  be  expected  to  see  living 
men  and  women 

Made  sad  by  dew  and  wind,  and  tree-barred  moon, 

or 

In  Avalon  asleep, 
Among  the  poppies  and  the  yellow  flowers. 

If  "the  ladies'  names  bite  verily  like  steel," 
and  massier  things  weigh  more  light  in  "that 
half  sleep,  half  strife  (strange  sleep,  strange 
strife)  that  men  call  living,"  yet  sometimes  might 
be  heard  a  voice  crying : 

When  you  catch  his  eyes  through  the  helmit-slit, 
Swerve  to  the  left,  then  out  at  his  head. 
And  the  Lord  God  give  you  joy  of  it. 

Swinburne's  memory  of  Morris's  early  verses, 
or  at  least  King  Arthur's  Tomb,  enabled  him 
to  quote  them  in  reviewing  Jason,  and  he 
thought  it  would  be  safe  to  swear  to  his 
accuracy ;  "  such  verses  are  not  forgettable,"  he 
said;  he  found  in  the  figures  presented  by  them 
"the  blood  and  breath,  the  shape  and  step  of 
life."  In  1862  he  published  a  story  in  the 
manner  of  Morris's  early  romances.  Dead  Love, 

63 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

where  a  womun  falls  in  love  with  the  corpse  of 
her  husband's  murderer,  and  brings  it  to  life  by 
her  kissing,  but  is  burnt  along  with  it  by  the 
cousin  who  had  brought  her  the  corpse  to  gratify 
hate,  not  love. 

Swinburne's  training  among  artists  taught  him 
to  say  of  a  poem  of  Baudelaire :  "  Nothing  can 
beat  that  as  a  piece  of  beautiful  drawing."  His 
review  of  Baudelaire's  Fleurs  du  Mai  is  at  least 
as  interesting  now  for  its  indication  of  his  own 
tastes  and  opinions.  Taking  occasion  to  remark 
that  French  critics  seemed  to  have  forgotten 
that  "  a  poet's  business  is  presumably  to  write 
good  verses  and  by  no  means  to  redeem  the  age 
and  remould  society,"  he  did  not  conceal  the 
fact  that  in  the  greater  part  of  the  book  Baude- 
laire "  has  chosen  to  dwell  mainly  upon  sad  and 
strange  things — the  weariness  of  pain  and  the 
bitterness  of  pleasure — the  perverse  happiness 
and  wayward  sorrows  of  exceptional  people.  It 
has  the  languid  lurid  beauty  of  close  and 
threatening  weather — a  heavy,  heated  tempera- 
ture, with  dangerous  hot-house  scents  in  it ; 
thick  shadow  of  cloud  about  it,  and  fire  of 
molten  light."  Which  is  very  much  what  Pater 
was  afterwards  to  say  of  Morris's  early  poems. 
"  It  is  "  Swinburne  went  on,  "  quite  clear  of  all 
whining  and  windy  lamentation  ;  there  is  nothing 
of  the  blubbering  and  shrieking  style  long  since 

G4 


PREPARATIONS 

exploded.  The  M^riter  delights  in  problems  and 
has  a  natural  leaning  to  obscure  and  sorrowful 
things.  Failure  and  sorrow,  next  to  physical 
beauty  and  perfection  of  sound  or  scent,  seem  to 
have  an  infinite  attraction  for  him.  .  .  .  Not  the 
luxuries  of  pleasures  in  their  first  simple  form, 
but  the  sharp  and  cruel  enjoyments  of  pain,  the 
acrid  relish  of  suffering  felt  or  inflicted,  the  sides 
on  which  Nature  looks  unnatural,  go  to  make 
up  the  stuff  and  substance  of  this  poetry.  .  .  . 
Even  of  the  loathsomest  bodily  putrescence  and 
decay  he  can  make  some  noble  use."  Swin- 
burne noticed  Beaudelaire's  "feline  style  of 
beauty — subtle,  luxurious,  with  sheathed  claws." 
Finally  he  said,  what  might  appear  to  qualify 
the  remark  first  quoted,  but  does  not  and  was 
not  meant  to  do  so  :  "  it  is  not  his  or  any  artist's 
business  to  warn  against  evil ;  but  certainly  he 
does  not  exhort  to  it,  knowing  well  enough  that 
the  one  fault  is  as  great  as  the  other."  This  is 
the  writing  of  a  man  whose  intellect,  whatever 
his  "  Bohemian  follies,"  was  clear  and  serene. 

One  of  Swinburne's  chapters  on  pictures  in 
Essays  and  Studies  consists  of  "Notes  on 
Designs  of  the  old  Masters  at  Florence,"  notes 
made  during  a  visit  in  the  spring  of  1864. 
As  in  JVilliavi  Blake  he  made  a  number  of 
brilliant  translations  of  pictures  into  words,  of 
a  drawing  by  Michael  Angelo,  for  example : 
E  65 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

liroiid  biacc'lets  divide  the  slmpelv  splendour  of  her 
arms ;  over  the  nakedness  of  lier  lirm  and  luminous 
breasts,  just  below  the  neck,  there  is  passed  a  band  as  of 
metal.  Her  eyes  are  full  of  proud  and  passionless  lust 
after  gold  and  blood ;  her  hair,  close  and  curled,  seems 
ready  to  shudder  in  sunder  and  divide  into  snakes.  Her 
throat,  full  and  fresh,  round  and  hard  to  the  eye  as  her 
bosom  and  arms,  is  erect  and  stately,  the  head  set  firm  on 
it  without  any  droop  or  lift  of  the  chin  ;  her  mouth 
crueller  than  a  tiger's,  colder  than  a  snake's,  and  beautiful 
beyond  a  woman's.     She  is  the  deadlier  Venus  incarnate ; 

7roXX»;  yuev  ef  Beotm  kovk  ui'wvv/jlo^ 

dea  ' 

for  upon  earth  also  many  names  might  be  found  for 
her ;  Lamia  re-transformed,  invested  now  with  a  fuller 
beauty,  but  divested  of  all  feminine  attributes  not 
native  to  the  snake — a  Lamia  loveless  and  unassailable 
by  the  Sophist,  readier  to  drain  life  out  of  her  lover 
than  to  fiide  for  his  sake  at  his  side ;  or  the  Persian 
Amcstris,  watching  the  only  breasts  on  earth  more 
beautiful  than  her  own  cut  oft'  from  her  rival's  living 
bosom ;  or  Cleopatra,  not  dying  but  turning  serpent 
under  the  serpent's  bite ;  or  that  queen  of  the  extreme 
East  who  with  her  husband  marked  every  day  as  it 
went  by  some  device  of  a  new  and  wonderful  cruelty." 

By  these  fancies  he  prepared  for  his  own 
Faustine^  for  Pater's  meditation  on  La  Gio- 
conda,  for  the  metamorphoses  of  Dorian  Gray. 

Of  one  head  which  mii^ht  be  a  boy's  or  a  girl's, 
^'  having  in  it  the  dehcious  doubt  of  ungrown 

m 


PREPARATIONS 

beauty,  pausing  at  the  point  where  the  ways  of 
loveliness  divide,"  he  says,  thinking  perhaps  both 
of  his  own  and  Musset's  Fragoletta — "  we  may 
give  it  the  typical  strawberry  flower  {Fragoletta) 
and  leave  it  to  the  Loves." 

This  visit  to  Italy  confirmed  his  love  of  her. 
Italy,  like  the  sea,  became  his  "  Mother " ;  she 
had  made  him,  he  said,  before  his  lips  could  sing 
her  "  choral-souled  boy  priest."  Siena  became 
"the  lovely  city  of  my  love."  Above  all  at 
Fiesole,  with  an  introduction  from  Monckton 
Milnes  (Lord  Houghton),  he  called  on  Landor, 
the  Roman-hearted  gentleman,  repubHcan,  poet, 
scholar,  lover  of  Italy,  disHker  of  Byron,  who  had 
gained  "  a  double  crown  of  glory  in  verse  and  in 
prose  "  like  Milton's  and  no  other  Englishman's 
since,  whom,  henceforward,  man  and  poet, 
Swinburne  was  to  praise  and  re-praise  and  over- 
praise continually.  He  asked  and  obtained 
permission  to  dedicate  Atalanta  in  Calydon  to 
Landor,  but  by  the  intervention  of  death  was 
compelled  to  dedicate  it,  which  he  did  in  Greek, 
to  Landor's  memory,  adding  a  memorial  poem 
to  Poems  and  Ballads,  and  to  Studies  in  Song  a 
"Song"  eight  hundred  lines  long  for  the 
centenary,  though  five  years  late  (1880).  Yet 
further  indirect  tributes  he  paid  in  verse  from 
time  to  time,  by  his  deification  of  tyrannicide, 
for  Landor  had  written  a  poem,  with  a  note 

67 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

from  Cicero's  "Philippics,"  called  "Tyrannicide," 
saying : 

Most  dear  of  all  the  virtues  to  her  sire 

Is  Justice  ;  and  most  dear 
To  Justice  is  Tyrannicide  .   .   . 

Other  literary  influence  on  Swinburne,  except 
perhaps  in  confirminf^  his  tendency  to  massive- 
ness  in  prose,  Landor  had  none ;  for  he  was  the 
calmest,  most  temperate,  and  most  motionless  of 
poets  ;  the  author  oi  Atalanta  was  the  least  calm, 
the  most  intemperate,  the  fullest  of  motion. 
But  for  many  years  Swinburne  liked  to  recall 
how  I^andor,  "  Republican  and  Atheist,"  who 
had  encouraged  and  strengthened  the  young 
spirit  of  Shelley  half  a  century  before,  had  done 
the  same  for  "  another  young  man  who  aspired 
to  show  himself  a  poet." 


G8 


Ill 

THE   APPROACH 

After  Atalanta,  but  in  the  same  year,  Swin 
burne  published  another  play,  begun,  at  least, 
when  he  was  an  undergraduate,  in  the  period  of 
Rosamond  and  JVie  Queen  Motlier.  Later  re- 
vision probably  made  Chastelard  a  far  more 
characteristic  piece.  The  style,  for  example,  is 
marked  by  ways  that  were  to  prevail  in  it 
thenceforward.  Such  is  the  repetition  of  the 
long  "  a  "  sound  in  these  lines  : 

They  shall  not  say  but  I  had  grace  to  give 

Even  for  love's  sake.    Why,  let  them  take  their  way ; 

in  many  other  places,  and  throughout  IMary's 
speech  beginning,  "  One  of  you  maidens  there  "  ; 
the  repetition  also  of  the  same  word,  as  here : 

He  says  your  grace  given  would  scathe  yourself, 
And  little  grace  for  such  a  grace  as  that  .  .  .  ; 

the  fondness  for  an  oft-repeated  "  i "  as  in  : 

And  then  fall  blind  and  die  with  sight  of  it ; 
69 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

and  ibr  chiming  like  "  lied  and  died  "  and 

Have  made  up  my  heart 
To  have  no  part ; 

repetition  of  an  idea  under  different  forms,  often 
with  a  deceptive  appearance  of  precision,  as  in : 

Of  sweet  came  sour,  of  day  came  night. 
Of  long  desire  came  brief  delif^ht ; 

a  triumphant  use  of  nothing  but  monosyllables, 
for  as  many  as  seven  lines  on  end  in  Mary 
Beaton's  speech  beginning,  "  Nay,  let  love  wait." 
Throughout  the  play  the  variety  and  fluidity  of 
the  lines  make  the  least  speeches  pleasant  to 
read. 

The  subject  is  the  love,  evasively  and  incom- 
pletely returned,  of  the  poet  Chastelard  for 
Mary  Stuart  (whom  he  had  followed  out  of 
France  to  Scotland),  and  his  execution  for  "  the 
offence  or  misfortune  of  a  second  detection  at 
night  in  her  bedchamber."  Chastelard  was  be- 
loved by  one  of  JNlary's  "four  Maries,"  Mary 
Beaton,  who  tried  to  save  him,  and  at  his  death 
prayed  for  revenge : 

So  perish  the  Queen'' s  traitors !  yea,  but  so 
Perish  the  Queen ! 

In  the  third  part  of  the  trilogy  on  ISIary  Stuart, 
Mary    Beaton   watched    the   execution   of    the 

70 


THE    APPROACH 

Queen,  the  avenging  of  Chastelard,  and  heard 
Elizabeth's  men  cry,  "So  perish  the  Queen's 
traitors ! " 

The  play  tells  a  story  of  aristocratic  and  poetic 
courtship  deHcately,  luxuriously,  picturesquely, 
with  perfect  sympathy  and  love  of  love.  No 
one  else  had  made  it  superfluous  by  telling  the 
story  in  the  same  way  and  as  well.  Swinburne 
himself  could  probably  not  at  that  time  have 
told  it  in  the  same  way,  if  as  well,  in  direct 
narrative  like  that  of  Tristram  or  Balcii :  ques- 
tion of  the  dramatic  form  is  therefore  idle.  As 
in  The  Queen  Mother,  there  are  many  striking 
encounters  fitted  with  appropriate  words ;  but 
as  in  Rosamond,  the  characters  talk  about  them- 
selves and  one  and  another:  Mary  is  "quite 
sure  I  shall  die  sadly  some  day " ;  she  knows 
"  that  I  am  beautiful "  ;  and  describes  the  battle 
of  Corrichie  and  how  she  rode  with  her  good 
men  and  took  delight  as  Swinburne  would 
have  described  it,  but  a  little  more  briefly.  The 
story  is  enriched,  but  even  more  retarded,  by 
numerous  picturesque  delays  of  song  or  dance 
with  lyric  or  pathetic  comment.  Mary  takes 
Chastelard's  sword,  and  seeing  her  fingers 

Clear  in  the  blade,  bright  pink,  the  shell  colour, 

becomes  dreamy  and  suggests  wearing  it,  and 
pretending  to  be  a  man,   Chastelard   to   be   a 

71 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

woman.  A  very  pretty  book  ini<,^lit  be  made 
out  of  the  pretty,  amorous,  stately,  melaiieholy 
passages.  liike  the  poet,  these  men  and  women 
love  the  elear,  visible  world  of  things  under  the 
sun,  with  a  certain  fever  at  thouglit  of  things 
which  are  under  the  earth.  When  JMary  sees  her 
maids  talking  together  she  says : 

You  weep  and  whisper  zoith  sloped  necks  and  hatds 
Like  (k'o  .sick  birds. 

In  one  place  she  describes  the  device  on  a  breast- 
clasp  as  closely  and  well  as  Swinburne  describes 
a  picture ;  she  describes  the  dress  in  which  she 
looks  so  beautiful,  and  notes,  "  I  am  too  pale  to 
be  so  hot."  Chastelard,  alone  in  prison,  sees  the 
last  sunbeam  of  his  life  in  the  dust  as  clearly  as 
if  it  were  a  childish  memory.  The  Scottish 
citizen,  remembering  a  sermon  against  INIary 
and  the  foreigners,  is  equally  vivid  with  his  pic- 
ture of  Pharaoh's  men  "  beautiful  with  red  and 
with  red  gold  .  .  .  curling  their  small  beards 
Agag-fashion,"  and  the  woman 

'rii.'it  ^ot  bruised  breasts  in  Egypt,  when  strange  men 
Swart  from  great  suns,  foot-burnt  with  angry  soils 
And  strewn  with  sand  of  gaunt  Chaldean  miles, 
Poured  all  their  love  upon  her.  .  .  . 

(Here  Swinburne  was  experimenting  towards  the 
Aholihali  of  his  Poems  and  Ballads.)  Chastelard 
will  remember,  even  in  the  grave,  Mary's  lips, 

72 


THE    APPROACH 

More  hot  than  wine^  full  of  sweet  wicked  words 

Babbled  against  mine  own  lips,  and  long  hands 

Spread  out  and  pale  bright  throat  and  pale  bright  breasts. 

Nor  will  the  reader  of  the  play  forget  them 
and  her  many  cruel  or  bold  or  graceful  or  in- 
flaming acts.  Down  to  the  eyelash,  nay,  the 
"  very  inside  of  the  eyelid,"  and  "  the  blue  sweet 
of  each  particular  vein,"  the  picture  of  the  woman 
is  finished  with  amorous  hands.  The  "  splendour 
of  great  throat "  and  the  lips  "  curled  over,  red 
and  sweet,"  owed  something  perhaps  to  Rossetti's 
studio.  The  snake  at  her  heart  that  "  quivered 
like  a  woman  in  act  to  love,"  seen  by  Chastelard 
in  a  dream,  may  also  have  come  from  a  picture, 
but  certainly  became  Swinburne's  own,  like  the 
"  curled  lips  " ;  Chastelard,  for  instance,  would 
like  to  have  his  soul  bitten  to  death  by  joy  and 
"  end  in  the  old  asp's  way,  Egyptian  wise  " — in 
the  cruelty  of  extreme  desire  he  says  that  to  die 
of  life  is  "sweeter  than  all  sorts  of  life." 

The  chief  characteristic  of  the  play  is  that 
Chastelard  and  Mary  are  lovers  rather  of  love 
than  of  one  another.  They  think  and  dream 
about  love  more  than  they  love,  and  they  come 
as  near  as  persons  of  spirit  can  to  sickliness. 
This  is  no  fault,  but  a  limitation.  It  was  Swin- 
burne's intention,  and  no  accident :  not  perhaps 
conscious,  but  nevertheless  the  intention  of  his 
nature  which   was    towards    amorousness,   the 

73 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

love  and  luxury  of  love.  Thus  Chdstclnrd  is 
like  u  lyric  multiplied  and  evolved  into  a  play. 
Less  than  in  other  plays  do  the  lyrics  contained 
in  it  stand  out  clearly,  like  single  ships  on  a 
wide  sea.     The  fragment, 

Aloys  la  chatelaine 
Voit  venir  de  par  Seine 
Thicbault  la  capitaine, 

is  but  a  decoration  among  decorations.  But 
Mary  Beaton  herself  stands  out  against  the 
decorations  almost  like  a  song.  It  is  she  that 
sings  the  one  English  song : 

Between  the  sunset  and  the  sea 
My  love  laid  hands  and  lips  on  me ; 
Of  sweet  came  sour,  of  day  came  night. 
Of  long  desire  came  brief  delight ; 
Ah  lovcj  and  what  thing  came  of  thee 
Between  the  sea-downs  and  the  sea  ?  ,  .  . 

She  opens  the  play  with  a  French  song  as 
she  sits  with  the  other  three  Maries  in  the 
upper  chamber  in  Holyrood.  Then  she  is  sad 
with  singing  and  sad  to  hold  her  peace,  but  by 
the  end  of  the  play  her  dainty  sadness  has 
grown  to  a  full  sorrow  coupled  with  a  hate. 
She  is  like  Denise  in  The  Qiiec?i  Mother,  and 
shows  the  poet's  feeling  for  greys  among  scarlets, 
purples  and  greens. 


74 


IV 

POEMS   AND   BALLADS 

When  the  Chorus  in  Atalanta,  speaking  magni- 
ficently in  spite  of  their  conclusion  that  "  silence 
is  most  noble  till  the  end,"  spoke  of  God  as 
"  the  supreme  evil  God  "  and  said  : 

All  we  are  against  theej  against  thee,  O  God  most  high, 

readers  were  confused  because  it  sounded  like 
the  Old  Testament ;  Chastelard  disturbed  them 
because  in  it  God  undoubtedly  looked  small 
beside  Lust,  not  to  speak  of  Love ;  Poems  and 
Ballads  made  them  indignant.  At  least  the 
poet  cannot  have  disappointed  them.  They  must 
have  guessed  that 

All  day  long 
He  used  to  sit  and  jangle  words  in  rhyme 
To  suit  with  shakes  of  faint  adulterous  sound 
Some  French  lust  in  men's  ears.  .  .  . 

In  the  new  volume  "  crueller  than  God  "  is  a 
term  of  comparison,  God  being  a  name  for  the 
Supreme  Being  of  Christian  or  Heathen.  But 
the  "  pale  Galilean  "  also  is  accused  and  his  end 
foretold  ;  in  spite  even  of  his  power  when  it  was 

75 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

yet  new  the  worshipper  of  ProserpiiKi  could  tor 
a  moment  cense  to  lament  and  say  : 

Wilt  thou  yet  t;ikc  all,  Galilean?  but  these  thou  shalt  not  take, 
The    laurel,   the   palms   and    the    pa-an,   the    breast   of  the 

nymphs  in  the  brake  ; 
Breasts  more  soft  than  a  dove's,  that  tremble  with  tenderer 

breath  ; 
And   all  the  wings  of  the   Loves,  and  all   the  joy  before 

Death.  .  .  . 

In  Dolores  the  poet  asks — 

What  ailed  us,  O  Gods,  to  desert  you 
For  creeds  that  refuse  and  restrain  ? 

and  in  Laus  Veneris  the  knight  of  Venus  com- 
pares Venus  with  Christ : 

Alas,  Lord,  surely  thou  art  great  and  fair. 
But  lo,  her  wonderfully  woven  hair ! 

On  the  other  hand  the  story  of  St.  Dorothy 
and  The  Clirhtmas  Carol,  "suggested  by  a 
drawing  of  Mr.  D.  G.  Rossetti's,"  are  faultlessly 
devout ;  and  The  Masque  of  Queen  Bersabe  is 
a  miracle  play  including  a  pageant  of  fair 
women  but  ending  et  fufic  dicant  laudamus ; 
Aholihafi  is  a  chapter  of  Ezekiel  put  almost 
unch[inged  into  verse.  The  writer  might  have 
been  a  member  of  the  Church  of  England,  or 
a  Catholic,  though  hardly  a  dissenter,  and  almost 
certainly  not  a  communicant.  He  abused  God 
that  he  might  exalt    I^ove  and   Life.     In   the 

76 


POEMS    AND    BALLADS 

same  way  his  lovers  talk  of  death  only  because 
they  are  so  much  in  love  with  life  and  love  that 
they  are  indignant  at  the  shortness  thereof. 
They  are  protesting  against  the  view  of  that 
other  poet : 

I  am  but  a  stranger  here  ; 
Heaven  is  my  home  : 
Earth  is  a  desert  drear ; 
Heaven  is  my  home.   .  .  . 

So,  too,  they  speak  often  of  weariness  to  show 
the  fury  of  life  that  has  led  to  it ;  and  of  pallor 
to  prove  how  they  have  spent  their  blood ;  and 
of  sorrow  that  it  may  be  known  they  have 
tasted  joy  even  to  the  end ;  and  as  to  sin,  they 
are  monks  and  nuns  in  a  shrine  "  where  a  sin 
is  a  prayer." 

At  the  end  the  poet  could  call  it  all  a  "  revel 
of  rhymes." 

It  is  even  more  true  of  Poems  and  Ballads 
than  of  Chastelard  that  there  is  less  love  in  it 
than  love  of  love,  more  passionateness  than 
passion.  Yet  in  another  sense  it  is  all  love  and 
all  passion,  pure  and  absolute  love  and  passion 
that  have  found  "no  object  worth  their  con- 
stancy," and  so  have  poured  themselves  out  on 
light  loves,  dead  women,  women  that  never 
were  alive  except  in  books,  and  "daughters  of 
dreams."  Few  other  books  are  as  full  of  the 
learning,  passing  at  times  into  pedantry,  of  love ; 

77 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

experience,  t'aiicy,  and  books  have  been  ransacked 
to  store  it,  nor  could  anything  but  a  divine 
vitaHty  liave  saved  it  from  rancidity,  putrescence, 
dust.  The  vitality  ascends  to  the  height  of 
terror,  that  panic  terror  of  noon  which  super- 
stition truly  discerned.  In  the  midst  of  it  stands 
the  poet,  a  young  man  of  an  ancient  border 
family  with  flame-coloured  hair,  a  brilliant  human 
being  who  lived  seventy-two  years,  and  for  the 
most  part  flourished,  until  he  died  of  influenza 
and  pneumonia.  He  resembles  the  beautiful 
tyrant  in  Dolo7'es  : 

When,  with  flame  all  around  him  aspirant, 

Stood,  flushed  as  a  harp-player  stands. 
The  implacable  beautiful  tyrant, 

Rose-crowned,  having  Death  in  his  hands ; 
And  a  sound  as  the  sound  of  loud  water 

Smote  far  through  the  flight  of  the  fires. 
And  mixed  with  the  lightning  of  slaughter 

A  thunder  of  lyres. 

Until  virtue  produces  a  book  fuller  of  life  we 
can  only  accept  the  poet's  own  label  of  sin  in 
peril  of  blasphemy.  Nor  is  it  inapt  to  recall 
that  Richard  JefFeries,  one  of  the  holiest  of 
pagans  and  a  lover  of  Pocj/is  and  Ual/ads',  named 
his  sweetest  heroine  after  one  of  its  women, 
Felise,  and  seems  to  reflect  some  of  its  ardours 
in  The  Story  of  ISIy  Heart. 

Yet  Swinburne  did  aflix  this  label  of  sin.  He 
took  it  from  the  world  and  gloried  in  it,  coup- 

78 


POEMS    AND    BALLADS 

ling  it  with  Love  and  Time ;  coupling  Desire 
with  Pain,  Pleasure,  Satiety,  and  Hate ;  also 
with  Sorrow  and  Death.  Now  he  was  dwelling 
on  "  loves  perverse  "  and  the  "  raptures  and  roses 
of  vice  "  in  contrast  with  the  "  lilies  and  languors 
of  virtue  "  ;  now  calling  sin  "  sweet,"  but  "  brief 
beyond  regret,"  and  only  a  "  brief  bitter  bliss  "  ; 
acknowledging  "  all  the  sting  and  all  the  stain 
of  long  delight "  ;  yet  again  acclaiming  "  the 
strange  great  sins."  Seldom  is  there  any  pure 
so-called  pagan  delight  in  what  may  afterwards 
be  judged  sin.  At  one  time  the  very  name  of 
"  sin "  is  given  where  the  world  gives  it ;  at 
another  the  pain  and  the  weariness,  the  feverish- 
ness,  the  bitterness,  the  faintness  of  it  are  pub- 
lished, with  moans  or  laughter.  He  consciously 
exalts  the  name  of  sin,  as  Baudelaire  did  La 
Debauche  et  la  Moi^t  .  .  .  deux  aimables  filles ; 
and  Lady  Macbeth,  dme  piiissante  au  ciivie  ;  and 
the  Night  of  Michael  Angelo  : 

Qui  tors  paisablement  dans  un  pose  etrange 
Tes  appas  fa9onnes  aux  bouches  des  Titans  ; 

and  the  impure  woman,  that  blind  and  deaf 
machine,  the  queen  of  sins,  the  bizarre  goddess, 
the  demon  without  pity  : 

Elle  croit,  elle  sait,  cette  vierge  infeconde 
Et  portant  necessaire  a  la  marche  du  monde. 
Que  la  beaute  du  corps  est  un  sublime  don 
Qui  de  toute  infamie  arrache  le  pardon, 

79 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

Hut  Swinburne  is  more  detuelied  than  Haude- 
laire ;  his  praises  are  hghter,  and  l)eing  from  the 
lips  outward  are  less  sincere  as  well  as  more 
inmioderate  and  unqualified.  In  a  spirit  of  gay 
and  amateur  perversity  he  flatters  sin  witli  tlie 
appellations  of  virtue,  as  George  Herbert  gave 
his  religious  poetry  the  unction  of  love.  There 
is  no  remorse,  no  repentance : 

Until  God  loosen  over  sea  and  land 

The  thunder  and  the  trumpets  of  the  night. 

The  lovers  are  bruised  and  regretful  but  unre- 
penting  so  long  as  they  may  "live  and  not 
languish  or  feign."  Even  if  "  the  keen  edge  of 
sense  foretasteth  sin "  they  cannot  relent. 
Barrenness,  sterility,  perversity,  monstrosity, 
cruelty,  satiety,  are  made  into  praises  of  Love 
and  Sin.  Omnc  auhmtl  post  coitum  triste  est,  as 
a  criticism,  cannot  touch  the  wild  drift  of  the 
rhymes.  If  evil  and  misery  have  this  sweetness 
and  tumultuous  force,  show  me  what  is  good 
and  joyous.  Civilization  and  Christianity, 
England  and  Puritanism,  aristocratic  breeding 
and  a  classical  education,  and  we  know  not 
what,  gave  this  man  a  curious  knowledge  of 
bodily  love  and  a  loyal  ardour,  a  wonderful 
sweetness  and  mightiness  of  w^ords,  to  celebrate 
it  as  it  was  and  as  it  had  been.  He  brought  all 
the  rays  of  life  to  bear  upon  this  one  thing, 

80 


POEMS    AND    BALLADS 

making  it  show  forth  in  turn  the  splendour  and 
gloom  and  strangeness  of  the  earth  and  its 
inhabitants.  And  one  of  his  chief  energies  arose 
out  of  opposition  to  the  common,  easy  condemna- 
tion or  ignoring  or  denial  of  this  thing.  He 
rebelled  against  the  stupid  ideal  of  colourless 
polite  perfection  which  would  paste  strips  of 
paper  here  and  there  over  the  human  body,  as 
Christina  Rossetti  did  over  the  words,  "  the 
supreme  evil,  God,"  in  her  copy  of  Atalanta. 
Personally,  he  was,  I  believe,  not  opposed  to  the 
Criminal  Law  Amendment  Act  or  even  to 
Divorce  Law  Reform.  He  sang  what  in  his 
hours  of  intensest  life  most  rapt  the  attention 
of  his  keenest  powers  of  mind  and  body 
together. 

But,  as  a  rule,  he  is  not  directly  expressing  a 
personal  emotion  or  experience.  Few  of  the 
completely  characteristic  poems  of  this  volume 
are  or  could  have  been  addressed  to  one  woman : 
it  is  quite  likely  that  the  poet  seldom  felt  mono- 
gamous "three  whole  days  together,"  and  that 
if  he  knew  the  single-hearted  devotion  to  one 
woman  often  expressed  by  Shakespeare,  Burns, 
Shelley,  Wordsworth,  or  Rossetti,  he  never 
expressed  it,  unless  it  was  in  A  Leave-taking. 
Instead  of  "  Margaret  and  Mary  and  Kate  and 
Caroline,"  he  celebrates  Faustine,  Fragoletta, 
Aholibah,  Dolores,  Azubah,  Aholah,  Ahinoam, 
F  81 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

Atarah ;  and  it  is  a  shock,  though  a  pleasant 
one,  suddenly  to  come  upon  the  Interlude^ 
blithe.  bri<>ht  and  actual,  recording  the  happi- 
ness between  the  singer  and  a  woman  who  came 
when 

There  was  something  the  season  wanted. 
Though  the  ways  and  the  woods  smelt  sweet. 

This  poem  belongs  to  a  class  more  numerous 
than  conspicuous  in  Swinburne's  early  poetry, 
including,  among  others.  Rococo,  Stage  Love, 
A  Match,  Before  Parting,  and  Anima  Anceps. 
They  vary  from  the  fanciful  and  playful  to  the 
elegiac,  but  are  all  of  such  a  kind  that  they 
might  have  been  not  remotely  connected  with 
the  writer's  experience.  They  have  in  them 
something  of  Browning  and  something  of 
Rossetti  under  the  influence  of  Browning. 
They  are  admirably  done,  but  they  are  ob- 
scured by  the  poems  of  more  astonishing 
qualities,  which  were  possibly  drawn  from  a 
longer  fermentation  of  the  same  experiences. 
Into  the  same  class  with  them,  as  showing 
Swinburne  comparatively  pale  and  mild,  go  the 
narratives  in  the  manner  of  Rossetti  or  some 
other  obvious  model,  and  the  decorative  verses 
after  the  style  of  JMorris,  and  exercises,  how- 
ever consummate,  like  Aholibah,  which  could  be 
thought  pure  Swinburne  by  one  ignorant  of 
Ezekiel. 

82 


POEMS    AND    BALLADS 

Some  of  these  lesser  poems  prove  his  ability 
to  idealize  quite  blamelessly,  as  in  the  meek 
lines  of  St.  Doi^othy : 

Where  she  sat  working,  with  soft  bended  brows, 
Watching  her  threads,  among  the  school  maidens. 

He  could  be  blameless  to  absurdity,  as  in  speak- 
ing of  the  maidens'  "  cold,  small,  quiet  beds." 
He  preferred  to  idealize  beds  that  were  neither 
cold  nor  quiet.  He  himself  has  told  us  some- 
thing of  the  origin  of  Faustine : 

'^' Faustine  is  the  reverie  of  a  man  gazing  on 
the  bitter  and  vicious  loveliness  of  a  face  as 
common  and  as  cheap  as  the  morality  of  re- 
viewers, and  dreaming  of  past  lives  in  which 
this  fair  face  may  have  held  a  nobler  or  fairer 
station ;  the  imperial  profile  may  have  been 
Faustina's,  the  thirsty  lips  a  Maenad's,  when 
first  she  learnt  to  drink  blood  or  wine,  to  waste 
the  loves  and  win  the  lives  of  men ;  through 
Greece  and  through  Rome  she  may  have 
passed  with  the  same  face  which  now  comes 
before  us  dishonoured  and  discrowned.  What- 
ever of  merit  or  demerit  there  may  be  in  the 
verses,  the  idea  that  gives  them  such  life  as 
they  have  is  simple  enough  ;  the  transmigration 
of  a  single  soul  doomed  as  though  by  accident 
from  the  first  to  all  evil  and  no  good,  through 
many  ages  and  forms,  but  clad  always  in  the 
same  type  of  fleshly  beauty.     The  chance  which 

83 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

suggested  to  me  tliis  poem  was  one  wliicli  may 
happen  any  day  to  any  man — the  sudden  sight 
of  a  living  face  which  recalled  the  well-known 
likeness  of  another  dead  for  centuries :  in  this 
instance  the  noble  and  ftiultless  type  of  the 
elder  Faustina  as  seen  in  coin  and  bust.  Out 
of  the  casual  glimpse  and  sudden  recollection 
these  verses  sprang." 

That  Swinburne  was  ready  to  take  a  hint  of 
this  kind  may  be  seen  from  the  story  of  how  a 
lady  deceived  him  by  playing  "  Three  Blind 
Mice  "  as  a  very  ancient  Florentine  ritornello ; 
for  he  found  that  "  it  reflected  to  perfection  the 
cruel  beauty  of  the  JNIedicis."  He  had  a  nature 
that  magnified,  and  taste  directed  his  magnifica- 
tion towards  sin  and  the  sublimity  of  little- 
knoAvn  or  wholly  imagined  evil :  nor  was  he 
incapable  of  deliberately  flaunting  vices  before 
the  incurious  virtuous. 

As  his  poems  are  seldom  personal,  so  they 
are  not  real  as  Donne's  or  Byron's  or  Browning's 
are,  though  often  "  realistic  "  at  certain  points. 
I  They  are  magnificent,  but  more  than  human. 
Bliss  were  indeed  bitter  and  brief  if  wives  and 
mistresses  were  so  lithe  and  lascivious  and 
poisonous,  snakes  so  numerous,  blood  and  foam 
so  frequent  in  bower  and  brake.  They  are  divine 
rather  than  human,  like  the  pictures  in  the 
■temple  at  Sestos : 

84 


POEMS    AND    BALLADS 

There  might  you  see  the  Gods  in  sundry  shapes, 

Committing  heady  riots,  incests,  rapes  : 

For  know,  that  underneath  this  radiant  floor 

Was  Danae's  statue  in  a  brazen  tower, 

Love  slyly  stealing  from  his  sister's  bed. 

To  dally  with  Idalian  Ganimede, 

And  for  his  love  Europa  bellowing  loud. 

And  tumbling  with  the  rainbow  in  a  cloud.  .  .  . 

Nature  and  inanimate  things  are  sympa- 
thetic ;  not  only  are  the  girdle  and  the  hair 
"  amorous,"  but  the  water  round  a  woman 
bathing  is  "sweet,  fierce  water."  In  A  Ballad 
of  Life  the  very  ballad  is  human  flesh : 

Forth,  ballad,  and  take  roses  in  both  arms. 

Even  till  the  top  rose  touch  thee  in  the  throat 
Where  the  least  thorn-prick  harms ; 

And  girdled  in  thy  golden  singing-coat. 
Come  thou  before  my  lady  and  say  this  ; 

Borgia,  thy  gold  hair's  colour  burns  in  me. 
Thy  mouth  makes  beat  my  blood  in  feverish  rhymes  ; 

Therefore  so  many  as  these  roses  be. 

Kiss  me  so  many  times. 
Then  it  may  be,  seeing  how  sweet  she  is. 

That  she  will  stoop  herself  none  otherwise 

Than  a  blown  vine  branch  doth. 
And  kiss  thee  with  soft  laughter  on  thine  eyes. 

Ballad,  and  on  thy  mouth. 

Except  for  the  "  vine  branch,"  the  verse  gives 
by  itself  a  perfect  courtly  picture,  dainty  and 
joyous,  as  a  man  sometimes  imagines  some 
utterly  past  mode  of  life  to  have  been.  Swin- 
burne could  use  the  same  sensuous  plenty  upon 

85 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

something  in  the  ordinary  phme  of  Hfe,  as  in 
^•//  Partiiii^-,  but  not  without  a  touch  ahnost  of 
meanness  in  the  absence  of  anything  else :  Iii 
the  Orcliard,  a  not  dissimihir  mediaeval  piece 
from  the  Proveni^'al,  is  far  finer,  if  it  is  not  the 
finest  of  all.  In  his  most  characteristic  work, 
as  in  Imiis  J^c?fcns,  The  Triumph  of  Time, 
Dolores,  the  ballads  of  Life  and  Death,  he 
multiplies  thouglits  and  images,  either  very 
clear  or  vaguely  sublime  or  luxurious,  consistent 
with  one  another  and  given  continuity  by  the 
mood,  and  still  more  by  the  lovely  stanza-form. 
Only  in  the  narrative  work  is  this  continuity, 
logical  or  emotional,  very  definite,  though  the 
pervading  unity  of  tone  usually  gives  a  satis- 
factory first  impression. 

Of  confessedly  decorative  poems  in  the  style 
of  Morris  he  wrote  very  few.  He  preferred 
forms  that  allowed  a  loose  combination  of  the 
abstract  and  the  concrete,  where  he  could 
multiply  melodiously,  as  in  ^i  Hijmn  to  Proser- 
pine, llesjjerid,  A  Lameiitation.  Catalogues, 
like  the  Masque  of  Queen  Bersabe,  and  A  Ballad 
of  Burdens,  and  all  stanza  forms,  the  more 
elaborate  the  better,  permitting  or  commanding 
repetition,  like  ^l  Litaiiji  and  the  Rondels, 
pleased  him.  Every  form  made  terms  with  him 
except  blank  verse,  which  naturally  did  not 
compel  him  to  the  clear  definition,  the  regular 

86 


POEMS    AND    BALLADS 

pauses  and  slight  variations  of  theme  necessary 
to  produce  his  best  poems  and  yet  to  confine 
them ;  even  couplets  were  not  always  firm 
enough  in  their  hold  on  his  energies. 

The  stanza  forms  of  the  book  are  numerous 
and  very  different.  Some  are  old,  but  he  makes 
the  old  seem  new  by  making  it  leap,  or  making 
it  pause  with  "long  reluctant  amorous  delay," 
so  that  it  hardly  moves  at  all.  Some  are  new 
or  unfamiliar.  Even  the  stanza  of  Omar,  used 
for  Laus  Veneris,  is  transmuted,  by  rhyming  the 
third  lines  of  each  pair  of  quatrains,  and  by 
greater  variety  of  movement  than  Fitzgerald 
gave  it.  In  each  poem  the  rhythm  and  the 
arrangement  of  rhymes  give  the  form  a  richness, 
a  clear  tangibility,  which  must  be  enjoyed  for 
its  own  sake  if  a  full  half  of  the  poem  is  not  to 
be  lost.  They  might  be  as  fairly  indicated  by 
their  metres  as  their  subjects,  except  that  Swin- 
burne's use  of  metre  is  so  individual  that  we 
should  have  to  say  "  a  study  in  the  stanza  of 
Doloj^es,''  and  so  on.  This  is  true  not  only  of  the 
poems  of  love  and  lust,  and  the  confessed  ex- 
periments in  Sapphics  and  hendecasyllabics,  but 
of  poems  with  a  more  social  significance,  like 
those  to  Hugo  and  the  memory  of  Landor, 
and  the  songs  In  Time  of  Orde7\  In  Time  of 
Revolution,  where  the  poet  reveals  intellectual 
passions.     He  does  not,  like  another  poet,  have 

87 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

to  think  ill  liis  metre :  his  mastery  compels  the 
metre  to  tlniik  Ibr  him. 

Swinburne's  style  had  now  fully  manifested 
itself.  Some  of  its  qualities  were  prominent, 
especially  the  repetition— repetition  of  single 
vowel  or  consonant  sounds,  of  single  words,  of 
groups  of  words,  of  ideas.  A\'hether  always 
conscious  or  not,  these  were  essentials  in  Swin- 
burne's art.  Some  of  them  obviously  make  for 
pleasantness  of  sound,  as  in  the  repeated  "  ur  " 
sound  in  "  and  pearl  and  purple  and  amber  on 
her  feet";  others  more  doubtfully,  as  in  the 
frequent  use  of  "  light  and  night "  and  the  like, 
and  the  "  i's  "  of  Fragoletta : 

O  sole  desire  of  my  delight ! 
O  sole  delight  of  my  desire ! 
Mine  eyelids  and  eyesight 
Feed  on  thee  day  and  night 
Like  lips  of  fire. 

Almost  certainly  unconscious  were  repetitions 
like  that  of  the  image  of  a  wine  press,  four  times 
used  in  Laus  Veneris  and  several  times  else- 
where :  unconscious,  too,  the  extent  of  the 
repeated  use,  not  merely  in  close  connection, 
but  all  through  the  book,  of  snakes  and  siii,  of 
the  words  lithe,  pale,  curled,  sting,  strange,  sad, 
great,  soft,  sweet,  barren,  sterile,  etc.,  and  of 
collocations  like  : 

88 


POEMS    AND    BALLADS 

Or  poisonous  foam  on  the  tender  tongue 
Of  the  little  snakes  that  eat  my  heart. 

But  repetition  was  not  the  only  element 
in  the  sweetness  and  sonority  of  Poems  and 
Ballads.  As  Swinburne  loved  the  vowel  sound 
in  "light,"  so  he  did  all  full  vowels,  especially 
in  combination  with  1,  r,  m,  and  n,  as  in  the  line  : 

Comfort  and  cool  me  as  dew  in  the  dawn  of  a  moon  like  a 
dream. 

Much  as  he  delighted  in  the  speed  of  the 
anapaest  with  its  subdued  "of  the,"  "in  the," 
"and  the,"  "of  a,"  "in  a,"  "and  a,"  etc.,  he 
delighted  also  in  the  slow  long  vowels  close 
together  which  make  the  end  of  the  last  line  of 
A  Ballad  of  Life  a  kiss  : 

And  kiss  thee  with  soft  laughter  on  thine  eyes, 
Balladj  and  on  thy  mouth. 

The  rich  effect  of  the  repeated  "th,"  of  the 
"m,"  the  "i,"  and  the  "ou,"  apart  from  the 
rhyme,  is  incomparably  beyond  that  of  the  same 
idea — if  it  be  called  so — had  it  been  expressed  by 

Ballad^  and  on  the  Lips. 

Sometimes  he  must  bring  together  "  thine  "  and 
"heart,"  as  when  he  does  so  and  gives  such 
fondness  to  the  slow  line : 

The  soft  south  whither  thine  heart  is  set. 
89 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

Rather  more  than  nothing  perhaps  is  sacrificed 
to  sound,  hut  far  more  to  the  need  for  a  stately, 
a  dchcate,  or  a  suhhme  setting  to  Love,  Time 
and  Sin.  The  love  of  all  lovely  and  pleasant 
things  deludes  to  some  inexcusably  amphficd 
similes.  It  may  do  no  harm  to  the  praise  of  a 
woman  to  say  that 

Her  breasts  arc  like  white  birds^ 
And  all  her  gracious  words 
As  water-grass  to  herds 
In  the  June  days  : 

it  certainly  does  not :  but  when  Demeter  in  ^^ 
Elemis  describes  herself  unswaddhng  the  infant 
Triptolemus, 

Unwinding  cloth  from  cloth 
As  who  unhusks  an  almond  to  the  white 
And  pastures  curiously  the  purer  taste, 

she  indulges  the  sense  of  taste  inopportunely. 
Otlier  similes  are  carried  so  far  that  the  matter 
of  the  simile  is  more  important  in  the  total 
than  what  it  appeared  to  intensify  ;  others  merely 
add  to  the  quality,  not  inharmonious  and  not 
quite  intelligible  nor  asking  to  be  wholly  under- 
stood, of  the  passage,  as  in  Hespeiia : 

And  my  heart  yearns  baffled  and  blind,  moved  vainly  toward 
thee,  and  moving 
As  the  refluent  seaweed  moves  in  the  languid  exuberant 
stream, 

90 


POEMS    AND    BALLADS 

Fair  as  a  rose  is  on  earth,  as  a  rose  under  water  in  prison, 
That  stretches  and  swings  to  the  low  passionate  pulse  of 
the  sea. 
Closed  up  from  the  air  and   the  sun,  but  alive,  as  a  ghost 
rearisen, 
Pale  as  the  love  that  revives  as  a  ghost  rearisen  in  me. 

Here  no  likely  reader  will  inquire,  far  enough 
to  be  troubled,  what  it  is  that  resembles  the 
rose,  or  that  stretches  and  swings,  or  that  is 
closed  up  from  the  air ;  or  object  that  finally 
the  subject  of  the  comparison  is  virtually  used 
as  a  comparison  for  the  comparison.  Neither 
perhaps  should  it  be  complained  that  in  the 
same  poem  Death  is  both  a  person  and  a  some- 
thing with  "  iron  sides  "  through  which  hell  can 
be  seen ;  that  in  the  same  poem  Love  is  a 
"bloomless  bower,"  and  only  "lives  a  day";  that 
there  are  beds  "  full  of  perfume  and  sad  sound," 
and  doors  "  made "  with  music  and  "  barred 
round  "  with  sighing  and  laughter  and  tears,  and 
that  with  the  tears  "strong  souls  of  men  are 
bound  " :  nor  complained  that  very  different  things 
are  frequently  spoken  of  as  if  belonging  to  the 
same  class,  as  "lips,"  "foam,"  and  "fangs,"  or 
"  serpents  "  and  "  cruelties,"  "  summer  and  per- 
fume and  pride,"  "  sand  and  ruin  and  gold," 
"  the  treading  of  wine "  and  "  the  feet  of  the 
dove,"  "  spring  and  seed  and  swallow "  ;  and 
that  exact  correspondence  is  wanting  in  the 
lines: 

91 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

For  reapinj;  folk  .iiid  sowiiifr, 
For  harvest  time  and  mowing. 

Where  metaphor  and  simile  crowd  they  have 
a  lower  scale  of  values  tlian  common,  and  no 
attempt  need  be  made  to  see  Love  filling  itself 
with  tears,  girdling  itself  with  sighing,  letting 
its  ears  be  filled  with  "  rumour  of  people  sorrow- 
ing," wearing  sighs  (not  sighing)  for  a  raiment, 
decorated  with  "  pains  "  and  "  many  a  grievous 
thing,"  and  having  sorrows  "  for  armlet  and  for 
gorget  and  for  sleeve."  I  do  not  know  how  to 
defend  it,  except  that  in  practice  and  in  a  state 
of  sobriety  that  verse  of  A  Ballad  of  DeatJi  can 
be  read  with  pleasure  and  without  question. 
But  this  confusion  of  categories  and  indefinite 
definiteness  of  images  is  as  common  in  Swin- 
burne's poetry,  as  in  bad  prose.  He  will  say 
that  a  woman  is  "  clothed  like  summer  with 
sweet  hours,"  but  that  at  the  same  time  her 
eyelids  are  shaken  and  blue  and  filled  with 
sorrow.  He  will  say  also  that  she  had  a  cithern 
strung  with  the  "  subtle-coloured  "  hair  of  a  dead 
lute -player,  the  seven  strings  being  charity, 
tenderness,  pleasure,  sorrow,  sleep,  and  sin,  and 
"  loving  kindness,  that  is  pity's  kin  and  is  most 
pitiless  " ;  while  of  the  tlu-ee  men  with  her  one 
is  pity  and  another  is  sorrow.  Who  the  lady  is 
and  who  "  my  lady  "  is,  and  what  in  A  Ballad  of 
Lije  his  soul  meant  in  saying : 

92 


POEMS    AND    BALLADS 

This  is  marvellous 
Seeing  the  air's  face  is  not  so  delicate 
Nor  the  sun's  grace  so  great. 
If  sin  and  she  be  kin  or  amorous, 

remains  a  matter  for  subtle  and  perhaps  eternal 

debate.    Marvellous  it  also  is  that  such  confusion 

\  of  what  must  be  and  what  cannot  be  visualized 

;  should  yet  be  harmonized  by  rhythm,  by  sweet- 

j  ness  of  words,  and  by  the  dominant  ideas  of  Love, 

I  etc.,  into  something  which  on  the  whole  the  mind 

'  accepts  and  the  spirit  embraces.     At  the  same 

^  time,  not  all  the  vagueness  is  good.     "  Grey  old 

miseries  "  is  not  good  ;  nor  is  "  hours  of  fruitful 

breath  "  or  "  lands  wherein  time  grows  "  ;  "  the 

wild  end  of  things  "  is  an  inadequate  description 

of  the  scene  of  Prometheus'  agony.     There  are 

places,  too,  where  the  poet's  figurative  use  of 

"  clothed "  and  "  clad,"  from  the  first  page  to 

the  last  but  one,  is  vain,  as  when  "  the  wave  of 

the  world  "  is  said  to  be  "  clad  about  with  seas 

as  with  wings  "  and  also  "  impelled  of  invisible 

tides."     The  source  may,  perhaps,  be  found  in 

the  Biblical  "  clothed  in  thunder,"  which  is  said 

to  be  a  sublimity  of  mistranslation. 

The  Bible  gave  him  the  matter  and  language 
of  the  whole  of  A  Litanij,  and  with  Malory 
and  Morris  gave  him  something  at  least  of  his 
taste  for  monosyllables,  the  archaism  of  words 
like  "  certes,"  "  right  gladly  then,"  "  begot,"  and 

93 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

of  whole  poems  like  The  Masque  of  Queen 
UevHuhe.  From  liossctti  he  took  the  habit  of 
rhymin«T  "  waters  "  with  "  hers  "  and  so  on  ;  from 
Baudelaire  something  of  his  Satanism  and  some 
of  his  snakes;  from  Hugo  some  of  his  exuberance. 
But  these  elements  are  seldom  unduly  con- 
spicuous save  under  a  microscope.  Elements 
peculiarly  his  own  are  far  more  conspicuous. 
Love  of  sound  and  especially  of  rhyme  per- 
suaded him  to  a  somewhat  lighter  use  of  words 
than  is  common  among  great  poets.  Space 
would  be  wasted  by  examples  of  words  pro- 
duced apparently  by  submission  to  rhyme,  not 
mastery  over  it.    The  one  line  in  Hespeiia  : 

Shrill  shrieks  in  our  faces  the  blind  bland  air  that  was  mute 
as  a  maiden, 

is  enough  to  illustrate  the  poet's  carelessness  of 
the  fact  that  alliteration  is  not  a  virtue  in  itself. 

Since  the  adjective  is  most  ready  when  words 
are  wanted  he  used  a  great  number,  yet  without 
equally  great  variety.  He  kept  as  it  were  a 
harem  of  words,  to  which  he  was  constant  and 
absolutely  faithful.  Some  he  favoured  more 
than  others,  but  he  neglected  none.  He  used 
them  more  often  out  of  compliment  than  of 
necessity.  Compare  his  "  bright  fine  lips  "  with 
the  passages  quoted  by  Ruskin  from  Shake- 
speare, Shelley,  Suckling,  and  Leigh  Hunt, 
'i'hey  do  not  belong  to  the  same  school  of  lan- 

94 


POEMS    AND    BALLADS 

guage  as  "  Here  hung  those  Hps,"  or  Suckling's 

Her  lips  were  red^,  and  one  was  thin 
Compared  with  that  Avas  next  her  chin. 
(Some  bee  had  stung  it  newly.) 

"  Bright "  and  "  fine  "  could  doubtless  be  applied 
to  lips  with  perfect  aptness,  but  they  are  not 
applied  so  here.  They  are  complimentary  and 
not  descriptive.  Swinburne  admired  brightness, 
and  he  called  a  woman's  lips  "bright"  and  in 
the  next  stanza  but  one  a  blackbird  "  bright." 
I  do  not  know  what  "  fine "  means,  but  I  sus- 
pect that  it  is  not  much  more  definite  than  the 
vulgar  " fine  "  and  his  own  "splendid."  A  group 
of  his  epithets,  as  in  "the  lost  white  feverish 
limbs  "  of  the  drowned  Sappho,  has  sometimes 
the  effect  of  a  single  epithet  by  a  master  like 
Keats.  Many  epithets  express  the  poet's  opinions 
of  things  as  much  as  their  qualities,  as  in  "mar- 
vellous chambers,"  "strange  weathers,"  "keen 
thin  fish,"  "  mystic  and  sombre  Dolores,"  "  strong 
broken  spirit  of  a  wave,"  "  hard  glad  weather," 
"purple  blood  of  pain,"  "feverish  weather," 
"  shameful  scornful  lips,"  "  splendid  supple 
thighs,"  "  sad  colour  of  strong  marigolds,"  "  clean 
great  time  of  goodly  fight,"  "  fair  pure  sword," 
"  like  a  snake's  love  lithe  and  fierce,"  "  heavenly 
hair,"  "  heavenly  hands,"  "  mute  melancholy  lust 
of  heaven,"  "  fine  drouth,"  "  fierce  reluctance  of 

95 


J 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

disastrous  stars,"  "tideless  dolorous  midland 
sea,"  "  fresh  I'etloeks,"  "  fervent  oars,"  or  the  four- 
teen epithets  applied  to  Dolores.  The  epithets 
in  the  last  stanza  of  A  Bulhid  of  Death  are  all 
appropriate  to  the  intention  of  the  poet — 
"rusted,"  "rain-rotten,"  "waste,"  "late  un- 
happy "—and  in  keeping  with  the  ideas  of 
fading,  sighing,  groaning,  bowing  down,  even- 
ing and  death — but  are  for  the  most  part  but 
indifferently  fitted  for  their  respective  places, 
and  could  perhaps  safely  be  transposed  in  half  a 
dozen  ways  without  affecting  the  sense,  though 
I  shall  not  prove  it.  That  transposition  would 
change  and  probably  spoil  the  total  effect  there 
is  no  denying. 

But  Swinburne  has  almost  no  magic  felicity 
of  words.  He  can  astonish  and  melt  but  seldom 
thrill,  and  when  he  does  it  is  not  by  any  felicity 
of  as  it  were  God-given  inevitable  words.  He 
has  to  depend  on  sound  and  an  atmosphere  of 
words  which  is  now  and  then  concentrated  and 
crystallized  into  an  intensity  of  effect  which  is 
almost  magical,  perhaps  never  quite  magical. 
This  atmosphere  comes  from  a  vocabulary  very 
rich  in  words  connected  with  objects  and  sensa- 
tions and  emotions  of  pleasure  and  beauty, 
but  used,  as  I  have  said,  somewhat  lightly 
and  even  in  appearance  indiscriminately.  No 
poet   could  be  poorer  in  brief  electric  phrases, 

96 


POEMS    AND    BALLADS 

pictorial  or  emotional.  The  first  line  of 
Hesperia — 

Out  of  the  golden  remote  wild  west  where  the  sea  without 
shore  is, 

is  an  example  of  Swinburne's  way  of  accu- 
mulating words  which  altogether  can  suggest 
rather  than  infallibly  express  his  meaning. 
"Golden,"  "remote,"  "wild,"  "west,"  "sea," 
and  "without  shore"  all  have  already  some 
emotional  values,  of  which  the  line  gives  no 
more  than  the  sum,  the  rhythm  and  gram- 
matical connection  saving  the  words  from  death 
and  inexpressiveness.  In  the  whole  opening 
passage  of  this  poem  there  is  the  same  accu- 
mulation, aided  by  the  vague,  as  in  "region  of 
stories  "  and  "  capes  of  the  past  oversea." 

Perhaps  the  greatest  of  his  triumphs  is  in 
keeping  up  a  stately  solemn  play  of  words  not 
unrelated  to  the  object  suggested  by  his  title 
and  commencement  but  more  closely  related  to 
rhymes,  and  yet  in  the  end  giving  a  compact 
and  powerful  impression.  The  play  of  words 
often  on  the  very  marge  of  nonsense  has  acted 
as  an  incantation,  partly  by  pure  force  of 
cadence  and  kiss  of  rhymes,  partly  by  the  accu- 
mulative force  of  words  in  the  right  key  though 
otherwise  lightly  used.  Hardly  one  verse  means 
anything  in  particular,  hardly  one  line  means 
G  97 


A.    C.    SW  INBURNE 

anything  at  all,  but  nothing  is  done  inconsistent 
with  the  opening,  nothing  which  the  rashest 
critic  would  venture  to  call  unavailing  in  the 
complete  effect.  Single  words  are  used  in  some 
poems,  verses  in  others,  as  contributive  rathei- 
than  essential ;  their  growth  is  by  simple  addi- 
tion rather  than  evolution.  Some  pieces  could 
probably  lose  a  verse  or  two  without  mutilation 
or  any  loss.  Faustine  or  Dolo7'cs,  for  example, 
could ;  and  Felise  would  not  miss  many  a  verse, 
and  several  of  those  phrases  like 

The  sweetest  name  that  ever  love 
Grew  weary  of, 

in  which  it  is  exceptionally  rich.  Who  would 
miss  a  couple  of  queens  from  the  crowd  of 
Herodias,  Aholibah,  Cleopatra,  Abihail,  Azu- 
bah,  Aholah,  Ahinoam,  Atarah,  Semiramis, 
Hesione,  Chrysothemis,  Thomyris,  Harhas, 
INIyrrha,  Pasiphae,  Sappho,  INIessalina,  Ames- 
tris,  Ephrath,  Pasithea,  Alaciel,  Erigone  ?  AMio 
could  weep  at  the  loss  of  a  verse  in  the  poems, 
To  Victor  Hugo,  or  In  Memory  of  Walter  Savage 
Landor,  which  not  even  exaggeration  can  save  ? 
And  yet  at  the  same  time  the  man  who  would 
not  miss  Azubah  or  iVtarah  would  not  willingly 
consent  to  her  disappearance.  It  was  not  a  good 
thing  to  use  simple  addition  very  often  as  Shelley 
had  done  once  in  The  Sky-Lark  ;  but  Swinburne 

98 


POEMS    AND    BALLADS 

also  wrote  In  an  Orchard ^  Itylus^  Anima  Anceps, 
The  Garden  of  Proseiyme,  and  Before  Daztm, 
where  addition  had  no  part,  where  EngUsh 
words  sang  together  as  before  1866  they  had 
never  done.  In  some  of  the  poems,  and  con- 
summately in  Anima  Anceps,  the  rhyming  words 
have  a  life  of  their  own,  as  of  birds  singing  or 
fauns  dancing. 


99 


OPINIONS  :  PROSE-WORKS 

England  is  said  to  have  been  troubled  by  the 
sound  of  Swinburne  praying  to  Dolores  to 
"  forgive  us  our  virtues."  "  The  average  English- 
man," says  an  Edinburgh  reviewer,  "  is  not 
easily  thrown  by  the  most  potent  spells  into  a 
state  of  amorous  delirium  " ;  he  is  anxious  also 
that  others  should  share  his  salvation.  The 
book  was  withdrawn  from  sale  by  Moxon,  but 
taken  over  by  Hotten.  The  "  clatter,"  said 
Swinburne  at  a  much  later  day,  gave  him  the 
pleasure  of  comparing  "  the  variously  inaccurate 
verdicts  of  the  scornful  or  mournful  censors  who 
insisted  on  regarding  all  the  studies  of  passion  or 
sensation  attempted  or  achieved  in  it  as  either 
confessions  of  positive  fact  or  excursions  of 
absolute  fancy " ;  in  the  Dedicatory  Epistle  to 
the  Collected  Poems  (1904-)  he  was  content  to 
say  that  "  there  are  photographs  from  life  in  the 
book  ;  and  there  are  sketches  from  imagination." 
He  withdrew  nothing.  "  There  is  not,"  he  said 
in  The  Athenaeum,  1877.  "  one  piece,  there  is  not 

100 


OPINIONS:  PROSE-WORKS 

one  line,  there  is  not  one  word,  there  is  not  one 
syllable  in  any  one  copy  ever  printed  of  that 
book  which  has  ever  been  changed  or  cancelled 
since  the  day  of  publication." 

The  best-known  attack,  Robert  Buchanan's 
article  on  "  The  Fleshly  School  of  Poetry  "  over 
the  signature  of  "  Thomas  Maitland,"  appeared 
in  The  Contemporary  in  1871,  five  years  after 
Poems  and  Ballads.  In  this  article  Tennyson's 
Maud  was  summoned  to  receive  blame  for 
affording  "distinct  precedent  for  the  hysteric 
tone  and  overloaded  style  which  is  now  so 
familiar  to  readers  of  Mr.  Swinburne."  Mingling 
amused  contempt  with  righteous  anger,  he 
called  the  author  of  Anactoria  and  Laus  Veneris 
"only  a  little  mad  boy  letting  off  squibs." 
Swinburne's  reply.  Under  the  Microscope,  was 
withheld  on  account  of  an  abusive  digression 
upon  Tennyson's  Idylls  of  the  King,  the  "  Morte 
d'Arthur  "  and  its  "  lewd  circle  of  strumpets  and 
adulterers  revolving  round  the  central  figure  of 
their  inane  wittol " ;  but  it  is  worth  reading  for 
some  of  the  criticism  in  that  digression,  and  for 
the  loose  and  merry  vigour  of  the  retaliation 
upon  Buchanan  of  which  this  may  serve  as  a 
specimen : 

Well  may  this  incomparable  critic,  this  unique  and  sove- 
reign arbiter  of  thought  and  letters  ancient  and  modern, 
remark  with  compassion  and  condemnation,  how  inevitably 

101 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

a  tniiniiig  in  (ircok  literature  must  tend  to  "emasculate'" 
the  student  .so  trained;  and  well  may  wc  congratulate 
ourselves  that  no  such  process  as  robbed  of  all  strength 
and  manhood  the  intelligence  of  Milton  has  had  power  to 
impair  the  virility  of  Mr.  Buchanan's  robust  and  masculine 
genius.  To  that  strong  and  severe  figure  we  turn  from 
the  sexless  and  nerveless  company  of  shrill-voiced  singers 
who  share  with  Milton  the  curse  of  enfoi-ced  effeminacy ; 
from  the  pitiful  soprano  notes  of  such  dubious  creatures  as 
Marlowe,  Jonson,  Chapman,  Gray,  Coleridge,  Shelley, 
Landor,  cnm  semiviro  comitatu,  we  avert  our  ears  to 
catch  the  higher  and  manlier  harmonies  of  a  poet  with  all 
his  natural  parts  and  powers  complete.  For  truly,  if  love 
or  knowledge  of  ancient  art  and  wisdom  be  the  sure  mark 
of  "emasculation  "  and  the  absence  of  any  taint  of  such 
love  or  any  tincture  of  such,  knowledge  (as  then  in 
consistency  it  must  be)  the  supreme  sign  of  perfect  man- 
hood, Mr.  Robert  Buchanan  should  be  amply  competent 
to  renew  the  Thirteenth  labour  of  Hercules. 

One  would  not  be  a  young  maid  in  his  way 
For  more  than  blushing  come  to. 

Nevertheless,  in  a  country  where  (as  Mr.  Carlyle  says  in 
his  essay  on  Diderot)  indecent  expo.sure  is  an  offence 
cognizable  at  police  offices,  it  might  have  been  as  well  for 
him  to  uncover  with  le.ss  immodest  publicity  the  gigantic 
nakedness  of  his  ignorance.  .  .  . 

For  some  time  after  this  Swinburne  indulged 
in  the  pleasure  of  harassing  Buchanan,  the 
"  polypseudonymous  lyri.st  and  libeller,"  with 
prose  and  verse  of  some  humour  and  much 
hilarity.     In  later  years  he  is  said  to  have  called 

102 


OPINIONS:  PROSE-WORKS 

his  early  poems,  or  some  of  them,  "sins  of  youth." 
The  crude  mass  of  popular  opinion  had  perhaps 
made  him  feel  that  he  had  been  too  much  of  a 
propagandist,  or  Satanic  missionary.  AVhether 
or  not  he  felt  that  he  had  been  guilty  of  "  some 
more  or  less  inappropriate  extravagance  of 
expression,"  as  in  some  "hasty"  topical  lines  long 
afterwards,  he  had  no  wish  to  stand  at  street 
corners  beseeching  all  that  would  be  saved  to 
adopt  a  wholesale  un-English  immorality.  He 
might  not  object  to  Maupassant's  picture  of 
himself  as  perhaps  the  most  extravagantly 
artistic  being  then  upon  the  face  of  the  earth,  a 
fantastic  apparition,  dwelling  among  fantastic 
pictures  and  incredible  books,  with  an  equally 
surprising  friend  and  a  monkey,  adorning  his 
dinner  table  with  another  monkey  roasted.  He 
himself  told  how,  when  he  was  rescued  from 
drowning  off  the  coast  of  France,  he  was 
wrapped  in  a  sail  by  the  fisherman  and  beguiled 
the  return  with  declamations  from  the  poetry  of 
Victor  Hugo.  In  later  years  he  declared  at  a 
supper  party  that  if  he  could  indulge  his  whim 
he  would  build  a  castle  with  seven  towers,  and 
in  each  of  the  towers  daily  should  be  enacted 
one  of  the  seven  deadly  sins  ;  he  enjoyed  saying 
that  "after  Catullus  and  Ovid,"  there  was  pro- 
bably no  poet  "with  whose  influence  a  pious 
parent   or  a  judicious  preceptor  should  be  so 

103 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

anxious  to  imbue  or  may  be  so  confident  of 
imbuing  the  innocent  mind  of  ingenuous  youth," 
as  Musset.  But  he  spoke  in  elderly  tones  of  the 
decay  coming  upon  Musset  "which  unmistak- 
ably denotes  and  inevitably  chastises  a  youth 
not  merely  passionate  or  idle,  sensual  or  self- 
indulgent,  but  prurient  and  indifferent,  callous 
and  effeminate  at  once " ;  he  condemned  with 
impatience  Keats'  early  verses  as  "  some  of  the 
most  vulgar  and  fulsome  doggerel  ever  whim- 
pered by  a  vapid  and  efJ'eminate  rhymester  in  the 
sickly  stage  of  whelphood " ;  and  pronounced 
that  "a  manful  kind  of  man  or  even  a  manly 
sort  of  boy,  in  his  love-making  or  in  his  suffering, 
will  not  howl  and  snivel  after  such  a  lamentable 
fashion "  as  Keats  in  his  letters  to  Fanny 
Brawne. 

Swinburne  had  in  fact  something  like  the 
standards  of  any  other  Englishman  of  his  class 
in  most  matters  excepting  art  and  beauty. 
Even  his  view  of  art  was  modified  to  suit  these 
standards  in  the  presence  of  so  new  a  phenome- 
non as  Zola  or  Whitman.  "  AV^hat,"  he  asked, 
when  Zola's  L'Assommoir  was  appearing  in 
La  Rcpublique  des  I^ettres : 

What  in  the  name  of  common  sense,  of  human  reason, 
is  it  to  us,  whether  the  author's  private  life  be  or  be  not 
comparable  only,  for  mystic  and  infantile  purity,  to  that 
of  such  men  as  Marcus  Aurelius  or  St.  Francis  of  Assisi, 

104 


OPINIONS:  PROSE-WORKS 

if  his  published  work  be  what  beyond  all  possible  question 
it  is — comparable  only  for  physical  and  for  moral  abomina- 
tion to  such  works  as,  by  all  men's  admission,  it  is  im- 
possible to  call  into  such  a  court  as  the  present,  and  there 
bring  them  forward  as  the  sole  fit  subjects  for  com- 
parison ;  for  the  simple  and  sufficient  reason,  that 
the  mention  of  their  very  names  in  print  is  generally, 
and  not  unnaturally,  considered  to  be  of  itself  an  ob- 
scene outrage  on  all  literary  law  and  prescription  of 
propriety  ? 

He  confessed  with  some  naivete  that  he  had  not 
read  the  book  through  and  could  not  do.  He 
was  not  interested  in  the  matter  of  L'Assom- 
moir ;  he  felt  himself  perhaps  confronted  with 
an  enemy  of  his  class  and  tradition ;  he  proved 
to  himself  that  it  was  not  a  work  of  art  and 
condemned  it.  In  the  case  of  Whitman  he 
began  by  admiring  the  democracy  and  the 
sexual  freedom  of  Leaves  of  Grass.  He  said 
in  1872  that  as  far  as  he  knew  he  was  entirely 
at  one  with  Whitman  "  on  general  matters  not 
less  than  on  political " ;  to  him  the  views  of  life 
set  forth  by  Whitman  appeared  "  thoroughly 
acceptable  and  noble,  perfectly  credible  and 
sane " ;  in  So7igs  before  Sunrise  he  had  called 
out  to  the  American  poet : 

Send  but  a  song  over  sea  for  us, 

Heart  of  their  hearts  who  are  free. 

Heart  of  their  singer,  to  be  for  us 
More  than  our  singing  can  be.  .  .  . 
105 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

Rut  by  1887  \\'liilin;in's  opinions  were  no 
longer  siillicient  to  excuse  his  lorni  or  his  con- 
scious purpose.  Therefore  Swinburne  said  that 
"  JMacpherson  could  at  least  evoke  shadows : 
Mr.  Tapper  and  Mr.  AV hitman  can  only  accumu- 
late words.  The  informing  principle  of  his 
work  is  not  so  much  the  negation  as  the  con- 
tradiction of  the  creative  principle  of  poetry." 
So  much  for  his  art.  As  for  his  opinions, 
"  Mr.  Whitman's  Venus  is  a  Hottentot  wench 
under  the  influence  of  cantharides  and  adulter- 
ated rum,"  and  in  Studies  in  Pilose  and  Poetry 
Swinburne  appealed  to  public  taste  in  an 
eloquent  passage  beginning :  "  If  nothing  that 
concerns  the  physical  organism  of  men  or  of 
women  is  common  or  unclean  or  improper  for 
literary  manipulation  ..." 

In  brief,  Swinburne  in  his  fiftieth  year  felt 
that  Whitman,  his  ideas  and  his  methods,  were 
incompatible  with  fact  and  fancy  at  Eton, 
Capheaton,  Paphos  or  Putney.  Probably  he 
was  already  equally  admiring  and  "adoring" 
both  Imogen  and  Cleopatra,  both  Blake  and 
Baudelaire,  in  the  days  of  Poems  and  Ballads 
and  of  his  first  love  of  AVhitman,  when  it  seemed 
to  him  that  the  qualities  common  to  Blake 
and  Whitman  were  so  many  and  grave  as 
"  to  afford  some  ground  of  reason  to  those  who 
preach   the   transition   of  souls    or    transfusion 

106 


OPINIONS:  PROSE-WOllKS 

of  spirits."  So,  too,  when  he  had  had  enough 
of  Whitman  and  abused  him  with  a  virulence 
due  perhaps  in  part  to  shame  at  his  former 
admiration,  he  retained  his  detestation  of  Puri- 
tanism "  from  whose  inherited  and  infectious 
tyranny  this  nation  is  as  yet  (1889)  but  im- 
perfectly delivered."  It  may  be  surmised  also 
that  he  continued  to  be  able  to  enjoy  the  rich 
strong  humour  of  Jonson's  Bartholomew  Fair, 
having  refused  to  leave  the  table  in  disgust  at 
the  coarseness  of  the  meats  and  the  rankness 
of  the  sauces.  He  did  not  resent  Aristophanes 
or  Rabelais.  But  Coprology  or  the  Science  of 
Filth  he  "  left  to  Frenchmen,"  at  a  time  when 
his  patriotism  had  the  upper  hand.  Moreover, 
he  condemned  Wycherley's  Country  Wife  as 
one  of  the  disgraces  of  our  literature — "the 
mere  conception  .  .  .  displays  a  mind  so  prurient 
and  leprous,  uncovers  such  an  unfathomable 
and  unimaginable  beastliness  of  imagination, 
that  in  the  present  age  he  would  probably  have 
figured  as  a  virtuous  journalist  and  professional 
rebuker  of  poetic  vice  or  artistic  aberration." 
Nor  could  he  stomach  the  "realism  and  ob- 
scenity "  of  Shakespeare's  third  period,  the 
"  fetid  fun  and  rancid  ribaldry  of  Pandarus  and 
Thersites  " :  though  he  was  ineligible  for  mem- 
bership of  a  Society  for  the  Suppression  of 
Shakespeare    or    Rabelais,    of    Homer    or    the 

107 


A.    C.    S  VV  I  N  li  U  R  N  E 

Bible,  he  could  feel  only  repulsion  on  reading 
the  prose  portions  of  the  fourtli  act  of  "  Pericles." 
He  was  glad  to  be  rid  of  these  things,  the  only 
matter  in  Shakespeare's  work  which  could  be 
unattractive  to  the  perceptions  of  "  any  healthy- 
minded  and  reasonable  human  creature."  Nor 
should  it  be  forgotten  that  he  thought  no  man 
ever  did  Shakespeare  better  service  than  Bowdler, 
who  "  made  it  possible  to  put  him  into  the 
hands  of  intelligent  and  imaginative  children." 

These  words  were  written  thirteen  years  after 
the  publication  of  Poems  and  Ballads.  With 
very  short  intervals  Swinburne  probably  ad- 
mired "  healthy-minded  and  reasonable  "  human 
creatures  all  the  days  of  his  life.  AVith  aberra- 
tions, he  was  himself  a  healthy-minded  and 
reasonable  man.  He  thought  Charles  Dickens 
the  "  greatest  Englishman  of  his  generation," 
and  though  his  expressions  were  too  easily 
excessive,  he  was  at  most  points  in  agreement 
with  general  or  respectable  opinion,  when  he 
had  not,  as  in  the  case  of  Blake  or  Fitzgerald, 
powerfully  helped  to  create  it,  or  far  preceded 
it.  Never  a  shy  solitary  singer,  he  gradually 
took  a  public  or  national,  though  not  a  popular, 
position.  He  wrote  patriotic  sonnets  about  the 
Armada  and  about  the  Boer  War.  Even  when 
not  a  patriot  he  was  a  passionate  lover  of  Eng- 
land, of  her  fields  and  waters,  of  her  great  men, 

108 


OPINIONS:  PROSE-WORKS 

from  the  Bastard  in  King  John  to  Cromwell 
and  Nelson,  from  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare  and 
Milton  to  Landor  and  Shelley ;  and  generously 
he  praised  them,  with  a  kind  of  mingled  state- 
liness  and  excitement,  conservatism  and  revolu- 
tionism. He  would  not  have  Arnold  speak  of 
England  as  if  it  were  the  whole  of  Philistia, 
and  wisely  answered  a  certain  page  with  :  "  I  do 
not  say  that  marriage  dissoluble  only  in  an 
English  divorce  court  is  a  lovely  thing  or  a 
venerable ;  I  do  say  that  marriage  indissoluble 
except  by  Papal  action  is  not."  He  not  only 
loved  Shakespeare  and  Rabelais  and  Cervantes, 
but  it  pleased  him  to  repeat  it :  "  And  now 
abideth  Rabelais,  Cervantes,  Shakespeare,  these 
three ;  but  the  greatest  of  these  is  Shake- 
speare." If  "  to  recognize  their  equal,  even  their 
better  when  he  does  come,"  were  the  test  of 
great  men,  as  Swinburne  says  it  is  their  delight, 
great  would  he  be,  for  his  praise  of  Hugo, 
Leconte  de  Lisle,  Tennyson,  Browning,  Arnold, 
Rossetti,  Dickens,  Mrs.  Browning.  .  .  .  He 
lived  by  admiring  usually  to  the  point  of  adora- 
tion, which  was  for  him  religion,  though  he 
scorned  idolatry.  For  on  the  whole  he  was 
glad  of  the  earth  and  what  was  upon  it,  past 
and  present.  He  preferred  Milton's  Areo- 
pagitica  to  Carlyle's  Latter  Day  Pamphlets, 
and  Athens  to  New  York,  but  he  believed  also 

109 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

in  "  the  incalculable  progress  of  humanity  "  since 
Shakespeare's  death,  and  he  enjoyed  the  in- 
comparable felicity  of  sharing  the  earth  with 
Victor  Hugo. 

As  to  the  formal  religions  current  in  his  time 
he  could  seldom  speak  of  them  with  much 
civility,  and  there  is  no  reason  for  doubting 
that  he  shared  the  feeling  of  the  singer  of  the 
Hymn  to  Pi'oserpiiic  about  "  ghastly  glories  of 
saints,  dead  limbs  of  gibbeted  Gods."  Abuse 
of  the  deity  was  one  of  his  chief  poetic 
pleasures.  Of  priests  he  always  wrote  as  if 
inspired  to  outgo  Shelley's  indignation  at 
thought  of  "  the  priest,  the  slave  and  the 
libertieide."  His  indignation  went,  in  fact,  so 
far  as  partly  to  disable  him  from  appreciating 
Dante,  for  the  "  ovens  and  cesspools  "  of  whose 
Inferno  he  expressed  careless  contempt  as  being 
fit  only  for  "  the  dead  and  malodorous  level  of 
medicEval  faith."  He  rejoiced  to  discover  that 
the  author  of  Hamlet  was  a  free-thinker — 
'*  that  loftiest  and  most  righteous  title  which 
any  just  and  reasoning  soul  can  ever  deserve  to 
claim."  He  had  discovered  also  that  Shake- 
speare, as  the  author  of  Julius  Caesar  and  King 
Lear,  was  a  republican  and  a  socialist.  With 
Jesus,  Swinburne  had  no  real  quarrel,  but  only 
with  the  Cross  and  its  worshippers,  and  he  once 
flattered  Jesus  by  a  comparison  with  Mazzini, 

110 


OPINIONS:  PROSE-WORKS 

and  spoke  of  Emily  Bronte's  "  Christ-like  long- 
suffering  and  compassion."  When  he  had 
written  two  sonnets  on  the  death  of  Louis 
Napoleon,  with  the  title,  The  Descent  into 
Hell^  and  the  conclusion,  "  the  dog  is  dead,"  his 
defence  was  that  he  could  only  have  offended 
"those  to  whom  the  name  of  Christ  and  all 
memories  connected  with  it  are  hateful,  and 
those  to  whom  the  name  of  Bonaparte  and  all 
memories  connected  with  it  are  not.  I  belong 
to  neither  class "  :  he  spoke  with  "  horror "  of 
the  "  blasphemy  offered  to  the  name  and  memory 
or  tradition  of  Christ  by  the  men  who  in 
gratitude  for  the  support  given  to  the  Church 
by  Louis  Bonaparte  and  his  empire,  bestowed 
on  the  most  infamous  of  all  public  criminals  the 
name,  till  then  reserved  for  one  whom  they 
professed  to  worship  as  God,  of  Saviour  and 
Messiah."  It  had  hardly  been  possible  for 
Swinburne  to  refuse  reverence  to  Jesus,  since 
one  of  the  few  formal  elements  in  his  religion 
was  his  exaltation  of  Man  in  place  of  God. 
This  became  a  form  to  which  it  was  seldom 
possible  to  attach  a  meaning,  save  a  vague, 
sublime  one.  At  least,  with  all  his  enthusiasm, 
he  never  gave  it  the  solemnity  of  that  passage 
from  Blake,  which  he  quoted  in  his  study  of 
the  poet : 

The  worship  of  God  is,  honouring  His  gifts  in  other 
111 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

men  according  to  his  genius  and  loving  the  greatest  men 
best:  those  who  envy  or  calmnniate  great  men  hate  God, 
for  there  is  no  other  God. 

Of  lesser  men  or  men  whom  he  found  him- 
self hating  he  was  less  respectful.  His  enemies 
were  "vermin."  Capital  punishment  for  "a 
parricide  or  a  poisoner,  a  Philip  the  Second 
or  a  Napoleon  the  Third,"  seemed  delightfully 
equitable.  He  had  evidently  no  instinctive  or 
philosophic  regard  for  human  life,  or  a  very 
keen  enjoyment  of  the  process  of  taking  an 
eye  for  an  eye  overcame  it ;  for  it  was  his 
opinion  that  an  imaginary  "  dealer  in  pro- 
fessional infanticide  by  starvation  might  very 
properly  be  subjected  to  vivisection  without 
amusthetics,  and  that  all  manly  and  womanly 
minds  not  distorted  or  distracted  by  pre- 
possessions or  assumptions  might  rationally  and 
laudably  rejoice  in  the  prospect  of  that  legal 
and  equitable  process."  Even  to  Victor  Hugo 
he  would  not  give  up  this  sense  of  justice, 
though  at  a  later  date  he  preferred  to  say 
merely  that  it  was  a  horrible  notion  that  such 
a  murderer  should  be  "knowingly  allowed  for 
one  unnecessary  hour  to  desecrate  creation  and 
to  outrage  humanity  by  the  survival  of  a  mon- 
strous and  maleficent  existence."  No  better  proof 
could  be  given  of  his  reasonableness  and  healthy- 
mindedness,  if  it  is  remembered  that  when  not 

112 


OPINIONS:    PROSE-WORKS 

speaking  as  a  plain  citizen  he  could  praise 
Voltaire  for  doing  so  much  "to  make  the 
instinct  of  cruelty  not  only  detestable  but 
ludicrous."  A  more  real  defection  from  the 
religion  of  humanity  which  he  appeared  to  pro- 
claim can  only  be  excused  on  the  ground  of 
idolatry,  for  it  is  from  Victor  Hugo  that  he 
accepts,  without  comment  except  of  over- 
praise, that  pretty  children  grow  up  into  ugly 
adults  because  "God  makes  and  man  finishes 
them."  Which  is  blasphemy  made  doubly 
vicious  by  its  conventional  source  and  its  senti- 
mental purpose.  But  Swinburne  would  concede 
anything  to  a  child  in  the  company  of  Hugo. 

Freedom  or    Liberty   was    a  safer   object  of 
worship  than  Man  because  she  could  never  be 
embodied  though  too  easily  personified.     Some- 
times he  meant   by  it  a   state  to  which   men 
looked  forward  as  lacking  some  present  evil  of 
tyrant  or  law  ;  sometimes  "  that  one  thing  need- 
ful without  which  all  virtue  is  as  worthless  as 
all  pleasure  is  vile,  all  hope  is  shameful  as  all 
faith  is  abject."     The  Freedom  of  Byron  and 
Shelley  or   the   Freedom   of  the  wild-hearted 
Emily  Bronte  was  in  his  mind  the  object  of  the 
Republicanism  which  he  loved  for  the  sake  of 
Brutus,   Milton,   Shelley,  Landor,  and  :Mazzini. 
He  used  the  words  "  repubhc  "  and  "  repubUcan  " 
as  freely  as  he  had  once  used  "  love  "  and  "  sin," 
H  113 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

and  with  equal  fervour.  When  he  found  in 
Ben  Jonson  the  sentence  : 

A  tyrant,  how  great  and  mighty  soever  he  may  seem 
to  cowards  and  sluggards,  is  but  one  creature,  one  animal, 

he  pronounced  it  worthy  of  Landor,  and  hastened 
to  say  tliat  "  such  royalism  as  is  compatible  with 
undisguised  approval  of  regicide  or  tyrannicide 
might  not  irrationally  be  condoned  by  the 
sternest  and  most  rigid  of  republicans  " :  he  en- 
rolled even  Collins  among  the  priests  of  tyran- 
nicide. The  kindly  queens  and  princes  who  had 
adorned  his  poems  with  their  beauties  and  their 
vices  he  quite  forgot. 

IMazzini  was  always  a  bigoted  republican  in 
his  fight  for  the  unity  of  Italy,  and  Swinburne 
would  probably  have  gone  as  far  as  Landor  in 
acclaiming  an  ideal  republic  and  abhorring  a  real 
democracy  like  the  American ;  he  was  content 
to  live  under  a  harmless  hereditary  sovereign 
and  sing  of  a  "  wdiite  republic  "  that  never  was 
on  sea  or  land.  In  the  poet's  mind  freedom  and 
republicanism  had  become  inseparable  from  the 
light,  so  much  loved  by  him,  to  which  he  had 
compared  them  in  his  adulation.  They  w^ere 
kept  fresh  as  well  as  alive  by  his  joyous  hatred 
of  Pope  "Pius  Iscariot "  and  "Buonaparte  the 
Bastard."  As  a  rule  he  was  content  that 
"  Freedom "  should  mean  what  it  could,  ac- 
cording to  the  reader's  prejudice  or   capacity; 

114 


OPINIONS:    PROSE-WORKS 

but  Carlyle  and  Riiskin,  proposing,  as  it  seemed 
to  him,  obedience  instead  of  self-reliance,  drill 
instead  of  devotion,  force  instead  of  faith,  for 
the  world's  redemption,  roused  him  to  a  tract  in 
1866  Of  Liberty  and  Loyalty,  privately  printed 
in  1909,  with  notes  by  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse.  He 
accused  Carlyle  of  a  doctrine  of  "  utter  passivity 
and  of  absolute  dejection."  Loyalty,  he  said, 
was  a  different  thing  ;  "  wherever  there  is  a  grain 
of  loyalty  there  is  a  glimpse  of  freedom  "  ;  if  we 
give  up  the  freedom  of  choosing  between  love 
and  hate  we  give  up  loyalty.  He  ended  by 
asking :  "  What  virtue  can  there  be  in  giving 
what  we  have  no  choice  but  to  give?  in  yielding 
that  which  we  have  neither  might  nor  right  to 
withhold  ?  "  "  The  law  of  the  love  of  Hberty  " 
continued  to  be  for  him  something  beyond  "  all 
human  laws  of  mere  obedience."  It  was  with 
Swinburne  chiefly  a  question  of  personal  re- 
ligion :  should  he  worship  the  dark  goddess 
Obedience,  or  the  bright  Liberty  ?  It  had  the 
advantage  of  suggesting  to  him  as  the  "only 
two  destinations  "  appropriate  for  the  close  of  a 
rogue's  career — "  a  gibbet  or  a  throne."  It  could 
not  seriously  interfere  with  his  mainly  inherited 
notions  of  what  was  "  manly "  and  what  was 
"  womanly." 
\  Swinburne's  judgments  are  less  interesting 
[  than  his  tastes,  even  in  the  arts.  His  judgments 
f  115 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

were  often  just,  his  reasons  for  them  exquisite, 
but  too  often  lie  showed  how  personal  a  matter 
literary  criticism  was  to  him,  yet  without  giving 
up  the  excessive  judicial  pomps;  far  too  often 
he  coidd  not  praise  one  man  without  damning 
another.  Therefore,  too  seldom  eould  he  use 
the  power  which  enabled  him  to  distinguish  the 
perfection  of  the  execution  in  The  Ancient 
Mariner,  as  "not  the  speckless  and  elaborate 
finish  which  shows  everywhere  the  fresh  rasp 
of  file  or  chisel  on  its  smooth  and  spruce  ex- 
cellence ;  this  is  faultless  after  the  fashion  of 
a  flower  or  a  tree,"  or  the  complete  devotion  which 
led  him  to  write  that  essay  in  Miscellanies  about 
Lamb's  IMS.  notes  on  ^Vither,  intended  for 
*'  those  only  who  would  treasure  the  shghtest 
and  hastiest  scratch  of  [Lamb's]  pen  which 
carried  with  it  the  evidence  of  spontaneous  en- 
thusiasm or  irritation,  of  unconsidered  emotion 
or  unprompted  mirth." 

His  one  wholly  necessary  and  perhaps  un- 
fading book  of  prose  is  the  study  of  Blake, 
since  it  gives  a  vivid  account,  a  subtle  but  also 
forcible  and  well-supported  criticism  of  a  genius 
then  almost  new  to  the  world  and  the  critics ;  it 
is  almost  free  from  truculence,  asseveration  and 
waste  digression  ;  and  no  one  has  superseded  any 
considerable  part  of  it.  The  study  of  Shake- 
speare has  enough  virtues  to  make  a  good  book : 

116 


OPINIONS:    PROSE-WORKS 

an  equal  combination  of  sense,  acuteness,  scholar- 
ship and  affectionate  sympathy  is  hardly  to  be 
found  elsewhere,  and  a  style  so  hostile  to  every 
one  of  those  qualities.  For,  as  he  grew  older, 
Swinburne  developed  a  manner  of  writing 
English  such  as  had  not  raised  its  head  since 
Johnson's  time.  Massiveness  and  balance  were 
cherished  in  it  with  extraordinary  singleminded- 
ness,  and  humour  that  should  have  somewhat 
pricked  their  follies  commonly  helped  to  swell 
them,  though  once  he  admitted  a  Limerick 
into  his  prose,  saying  that  literary  history  would 
hardly  care  to  remember  that  "  there  was  a  bad 
poet  named  Clough,  whom  his  friends  found  it 
useless  to  pufF:  for  the  public,  if  dull,  has  not 
quite  such  a  skull  as  belongs  to  believers  in 
Clough."  Not  that  the  style  crushed  the 
humour.  When  he  described  Dr.  Furnivall's 
writing  as  combining  "  the  double  display  of  an 
intelligence  worthy  of  Mr.  Toots  and  a  dialect 
worthy  of  his  friend  the  Chicken " ;  when  he 
suggested  that  Charles  Reade  "  should  not  desire 
as  he  does  not  deserve  to  escape  the  honour  of 
being  defamed  or  to  incur  the  ignominy  of  being 
applauded  by  the  writers  or  the  readers  of  such 
romances  of  high  life  as  may  be  penned  by  some 
erotic  scullion  gone  mad  with  long  contempla- 
tion of  the  butler's  calves  and  shoulders,  or  by 
some   discarded    footman    who,    since    he    was 

117 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

kicked  out  of  his  last  place  with  the  spoons  in 
his  pocket,  may  have  risen  or  sunk  into  notoriety 
or  obscurity  as  a  gluttonous  and  liquorisli  rhyme- 
ster or  novelist,  patrician  of  the  pantry,  whose 
aristocratic  meditations  alternate  between  the 
horsewhip  with  which  he  is  evidently  familiar 
and  the  dinner  with  which  he  apparently  is  not 
— the  prose  and  the  poetry,  the  real  and  the  ideal 
of  his  life  " — here  Swinburne  added  to  the  more 
usual  qualities  of  humour  that  of  carving  in 
marble  what  should  be  writ  in  water ;  he  made 
dignity  laugh  at  itself.  When  he  quoted 
Macaulay's  remark  that  a  certain  passage  in 
Crabbe's  Borough  has  made  many  a  rough  and 
cynical  reader  cry  like  a  child,  and  added  that  he 
himself  was  "  not  so  rough  and  cynical  as  ever 
to  have  experienced  that  particular  effect  from 
its  perusal,"  he  was  making  the  pompous  letter 
"  p  "  do  an  amusing  task.  But  this  dignity  was 
not  always  laughing  at  itself,  nor  when  it  is  can 
it  always  be  sure  of  company.  Sometimes,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  is  laughable  when  itself  is 
gravest.  That  laugh,  however,  is  cheerless  at 
best,  and  at  the  end  of  half  a  dozen  volumes  can 
be  but  a  liollow  "mocking  at  grief."  Only  a 
long  labour  of  most  diligent  eugenists  could 
breed  men  to  endure  such  sentences  as  this,  in 
The  Age  of  Shakespeare,  concerning  a  dialogue 
in  Dekker's  Virgin  Martyr. 

118 


OPINIONS:    PROSE-WORKS 

Its  simplicity  is  so  childlike,  its  inspiration  so  pure 
in  instinct  and  its  expression  so  perfect  in  taste,  its  utter- 
ance and  its  abstinence,  its  effusion  and  its  reserve,  are  so 
far  beyond  praise  or  question  or  any  comment  but  thanks- 
giving, that  these  forty-two  lines,  homely  and  humble  in 
manner  as  they  are  if  compared  with  the  refined  rhetoric 
and  the  scrupulous  cultuie  of  Massinger,  Avould  suffice  to 
keep  the  name  of  Dekker  sweet  and  safe  for  ever  among 
the  most  honourable  if  not  among  the  most  pre-eminent 
of  his  kindred  and  his  age. 

Sentences  of  this  at  present  superhuman  long- 
windedness  seemed  to  be  aimed  chiefly  at  long- 
windedness.  It  is  produced  by  the  double  pro- 
cess of  repetition  and  modification,  both  useless 
except  for  that  purpose,  since  no  one  gains 
anything  from  the  addition  of  "  humble "  to 
"homely"  or  from  the  supposed  distinction 
between  "  most  honourable "  and  '*  most  pre- 
eminent." A  simple  love  of  balance  and  inflation 
compelled  Swinburne  to  translate  into  the  Swin- 
burnian  as  it  did  Johnson  into  the  Johnsonian. 
He  would  speak  of  the  year  of  The  Alchemist 
as  "the  year  which  gave  to  the  world  for  all 
time  a  gift  so  munificent  as  that  of  The  Al- 
chemist." He  would  say,  after  mentioning  George 
Eliot's  Totty,  Eppie  and  Lillo,  that  "  the  fiery- 
hearted  Vestal  of  Haworth  had  no  room  reserved 
in  the  palace  of  her  passionate  and  high-minded 
imagination  as  a  nursery  for  inmates  of  such 
divine  and   delicious  quality " ;   he  forgot  that 

119 


A.    C.    SWINHURNE 

"passionate  and  hi^rli-mindcd,"  ''divine  and 
delicious,"  retarded  the  sentence  without  giving 
it  depth,  and  that  "divine"  was  in  any  case  a 
vain  vulgarism.  But  he  was  of  a  spending  and 
ceremonious  nature,  and  this,  coupled  with  his 
artistic  delight  in  balance,  repetition  and  opposi- 
tion, ruined  his  prose.  At  times  he  seems  to 
write  for  the  sake  of  constructing  formally  per- 
fect and  sonorous  sentences,  more  often  the  kind 
of  sentence  he  prefers  is  dictated  as  much  by 
that  preference  as  by  his  thought.  Now  he 
must  find  something  unqualified  to  say  about 
everybody ;  again  he  must  qualify  everything, 
and  institute  distinctions  founded  apparently 
rather  on  a  love  of  repeating  phrases  than  on 
subtlety,  as  when  he  says  that  Ben  Jonson's 
Discoveries  would  give  him  "  a  place  beside  or 
above  La  Rochefoucauld,  and  beside  if  not  above 
Chamfort " ;  or  he  will  allow  himself  to  be  hag- 
ridden by  the  letter  "  t "  and  "  d "  as  in  the 
clause : 

Some  perversity  or  oblicjuity  will  be  suspected,  even 
if  no  positive  infirmity  or  deformity  can  be  detected,  in 
his  intelligence  or  his  temperament ; 

or  having  suggested  "a  curious  monotony  in 
the  variety  "  will  ask  "  if  there  be  not  a  curious 
variety  in  the  monotony."  Had  De  Quincey 
and  Dr.  .Johnson  collaborated  in  imitating  Lyly 
they  must   have  produced  Swinburnian  prose. 

120 


OPINIONS:    PROSE-WORKS 

The  Bible  had  helped  :  here  and  there  Carlyle 
is  detected  in  a  phrase  like  "  Let  that  preferable 
thing  be  done  with  all  the  might  and  haste  that 
may  be  attainable " :  Landor  had  given  his 
benediction  to  the  massiveness,  Ruskin  to  the 
early  picturesqueness,  Hugo  to  the  effusiveness. 
But  from  none  of  these  could  he  have  learned 
to  speak  of  "  the  right  to  seem  right "  ;  to  launch 
himself  upon  rhythms  too  easily  detached  from 
the  context ;  to  praise  the  aged  Corneille's 
Psyche  as 

A  lyric  symphony  of  spirit  and  of  song  fulfilled  with 
all  the  colour  and  all  the  music  that  autumn  could  steal 
from  spring  if  October  had  leave  to  go  a-maying  in  some 
Olympian  masquerade  of  melody  and  sunlight ; 

to  write  passages  very  much  like  parts  of 
rhetorical  sonnets.  Time  after  time  his  prose, 
especially  in  Blake,  struggles  to  be  metrical,  but 
remains  agitated  and  dishevelled  prose.  The 
hand  which  was  loose  on  blank  verse  and  the 
heroic  couplet,  was  no  sterner  on  prose,  which 
offers  still  less  incitement  to  control.  The  formal 
sentence  was  perhaps  a  kind  of  feeling  after  a 
stanza  in  prose,  but  it  was  inadequate.  In  short 
passages  it  could,  even  to  the  last,  be  magnificent 
in  compliment,  contumely  or  humour,  and  when 
he  set  himself  to  pronounce  eulogies  of  nine 
dramatists  of  Shakespeare's  age  in  turn  his  per- 
formance was  admirable  as  well  as  astonishing. 

121 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

His  style  is  meant  for  public  oration.  Even  so, 
it  has  in  it  too  many  of  the  elements  of  debate. 
It  is  restless  in  readiness  for  attack.  It  could 
not  live  without  comparison,  and  comparison 
involved  tlie  most  truculent  disparagement  of 
someone,  of  Euripides,  Byron,  Carlyle,  or  Mar- 
^■itcs  Hallam,  or  praise,  too  general,  and  too 
much  like  flattery,  of  someone  else,  of  Landor 
or  ^^ictor  Hugo.  It  never  means  a  jot  more 
than  it  says,  and  by  such  a  style  "  when  all  is 
done  that  can  be  done  then  all  is  done  in  vain." 
It  makes  no  background  for  itself  and  no  atmo- 
sphere, being  hard  and  gleaming  and  mechanical. 
Swinburne  had  a  singular  knowledge  of  books, 
because  it  was  not  mere  learning  but  a  violent 
passion ;  he  was  a  voluptuary  in  books,  and  had 
been  free  to  indulge  himself  in  the  princely 
library  of  his  relative.  Lord  Ashburnham ;  and 
yet  all  he  could  do  was  to  flatter  or  abuse  them. 
Seldom  could  he  expose  their  qualities,  never 
his  own  feeling  for  them,  without  belabouring 
them  with  praise.  In  criticism  he  makes  laws 
and  pronounces  judgments ;  nor  has  he  more 
mercy  for  books  than  for  men,  whom  he  could 
condemn  to  "  lifelong  seclusion  from  intercourse 
with  the  humanity  they  dishonour "  as  "  the 
irreducible  minimum  of  the  penalty  demanded 
rather  than  deserved  by  their  crimes."  He  is 
best  at  loyal  flattery  in  verse  :  probably  no  other 

122 


OPINIONS:    PROSE-WORKS 

poet  has  written  so  much  poetry  about  books 
and  writers. 

The  study  of  Blake  and  many  scattered 
opinions  and  points  of  textual  criticism,  must 
be  long  connected  with  Swinburne's  name. 
Oblivion,  and  for  the  first  time  peace,  must  be 
the  end  for  most  of  his  prose,  with  all  its  passion 
for  literature,  for  what  is  beautiful  and  brave 
and  generous  in  men  and  women,  with  all  its 
eloquence  and  subtlety. 

When  he  talked  his  prose  the  power  of  it  was 
undeniable.  He  talked  much  as  he  wrote,  but 
added  his  own  priceless  excitement  of  enthusiasm 
or  indignation.  Mr.  Gosse  thinks  his  "mock 
irascibility"  and  pleasure  in  fighting  "deliber- 
ately modelled  on  the  behaviour  of  Walter 
Savage  Landor " ;  but  Swinburne's  size,  some- 
thing between  a  third  and  a  half  of  Landor's, 
must  have  established  a  new  variety.  JSlr. 
Gosse  recalls  part  of  a  typical  conversation  in 
which  Swinburne,  in  1875,  was  indulging  this 
irascibility  towards  someone  absent  and  un- 
named : 

He  had  better  be  careful.  If  I  am  obliged  to  take  the 
cudgel  in  my  hand  the  rafter  of  the  hovel  in  which  he 
skulks  and  sniggers  shall  ring  with  the  loudest  whacks 
ever  administered  in  discipline  or  chastisement  to  a  howl- 
ing churl. 

After  a  slow  beginning  the  words  were  poured 

123 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

forth  in  rapid  exultation  "  in  towcrin*,'  high 
spirits,  without  a  moment's  pause  to  find  a 
word."  So  powerful  was  his  temperament  that 
he  read  BotlnvclL  a  double-length  ehronicle 
play,  aloud  to  Burne-.Tones,  O'Shaugnessy,  P.  B. 
JNIarston,  and  ]\lr.  Gosse,  without  giving  any 
recorded  cause  for  complaint.  Even  lluskin 
bowed  down  before  the  portent  of  this  most 
extravagantly  artistic  being  then  upon  the  earth, 
remarking  of  course  that  he  was  "  righter  "  than 
Swinburne,  but "  not  his  match."  His  spirit  was 
extraordinary.  At  the  age  of  fifty  he  would 
write,  over  the  signature  of  "  A  Gladstonite,"  a 
letter  to  the  St.  James's  Gazette,  saying  that  he 
had  observed  a  certain  vagueness  in  the  charges 
against  the  boycotters  of  the  Primrose  League, 
and  giving  this  more  definite  instance : 

On  the  1st  of  April — I  will  confine  myself  to  the 
events  of  that  single  day — Mrs.  Outis,  of  Medamothy, 
was  shot  dead  in  her  carriage,  while  returning  from  a 
visit  in  the  adjoining  parish  of  Nusquam,  by  a  masked 
assassin  wearing  a  primrose  in  his  buttonhole.  .  .  . 

The  anonymity  was  unmasked  by  the  editor. 
Near  the  end  of  his  life  he  wrote  to  The  Times 
protesting  against  "'  the  vmsolicited  adulation  of 
such  insult "  as  his  inclusion  in  that  "  unimagi- 
nable gathering,"  the  British  Academy.  Tn  all 
things  he  is  said  to  have  been  extreme.  When 
he  had  left  a  dull  meeting  a  noise  broke  in  upon 

124 


OPINIONS:    PROSE-WORKS 

the  dullness  from  outside,  which  proved  on  in- 
quiry to  be  Swinburne  dancing  upon  some 
scores  of  silk  hats  by  way  of  revenge  for  that 
part  of  the  dullness  which  he  had  endured. 
Once,  it  is  said,  he  amazed  and  delighted  a 
dinner  party  with  his  conversation  and  reappeared 
the  following  day  to  apologize  for  having  for- 
gotten the  invitation.  Many  stories  of  uncertain 
historic  and  natural-historic  value  are  told  which 
await  the  imprint  of  official  biography,  such  as 
that  one  relating  how  a  Belgian  poet,  going  to 
pay  his  respects  to  the  great  Englishman,  had  to 
ring  at  the  door  many  times  before  it  was  opened 
by  Swinburne  himself ;  he  was  in  his  shirt  which 
displayed  his  chest  covered  with  blood,  the  result, 
as  it  turned  out,  on  anxious  questioning,  of  a 
romp  with  his  cat.  In  other  ways  he  has  been 
reported  "constitutionally  unfitted  to  shine  in 
mixed  society."  The  gentlest  of  his  passions 
seems  to  have  been  for  babies,  whom  he  wor- 
shipped on  his  knees  and  was  "very  fantastic 
over."  In  every  way  he  acknowledged  the 
possession  of  "  the  infinite  blessing  of  life,"  "  the 
fervour  of  vital  blood,"  which  made  him,  as  he 
said  of  Blake,  "a  man  perfect  in  his  way,  and 
beautifully  unfit  for  walking  in  the  way  of  any 
other  man,"  an  extraordinary  man,  and  yet 
fundamentally  a  "healthy-minded  and  reason- 
able "  one.     He  made  friends  of  other  men  with 

125 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

this  possession.  Like  Shelley,  he  was,  as  he 
said,  fortunate  in  his  friends,  chiefly  artists  and 
poets  like  the  Rossettis,  Morris,  Burne-Jones, 
Bell  Scott,  Mr.  Theodore  Watts-Dunton,  Mr. 
Edmund  Gosse,  but  ranging  in  type  from  the 
saintly  Clnistina  Rossetti  to  the  "unsaintly"  Sir 
Richard  Burton,  who  called  him  his  only  beloved 
son  in  whom  he  was  well  pleased. 


126 


VI 

SONGS   OF  TWO    NATIONS 
SONGS    BEFORE    SUNRISE 

Already  by  his  verses  on  Landor  and  Hugo, 
and  his  songs  In  Time  of  Order  and  In  Time  of 
Revolution,  Swinburne  had  shown  that  if  Love 
and  Sin  were  a  passion  with  him,  they  were  not 
an  exclusive  obsession.  In  the  very  year  after 
Poems  and  Ballads,  his  Song  of  Italy,  dedicated 
to  Mazzini,  proved  that  he  had  another  passion. 
Dolores  moved  him  to  no  such  tremorous 
emotion  as  he  gave  to  the  words  of  Freedom 
addressing  Italy : 

Because  men  wept^  saying  Freedom,  knowing  of  thee. 
Child,  that  thou  wast  not  free,  .  .  . 

no  such  worship  as  he  offered  Mazzini,  then  in 
despair  at  the  unsuccess  of  Garibaldi  and  the 
humiliating  generosity  of  Napoleon  : 

Thy  children,  even  thy  people  thou  hast  made, 

Thine,  with  thy  words  arrayed, 
Clothed  with  thy  thoughts  and  girt  Avith  thy  desires  ; 

Yearn  up  toward  thee  as  fires, 

127 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

Art  thou  not  father,  O  father,  of  all  these? 

From  thine  own  Genoese 
To  where  of  nijijhts  the  lower  extreme  lagune 

Feels  its  Venetian  moon, 
Nor  suckling's  mouth  nor  mother's  breast  set  free 

But  hath  that  grace  through  thee,   ,   .  . 

His  Ohhitioti  could  not  but  have  been  mis- 
taken for  a  love  poem  to  a  woman  had  it 
appeared  in  another  of  his  books,  though  a 
nation  seems  a  more  natural  recipient  than  a 
woman  of  the  other  kind  of  love  poem,  forty 
stanzas  long.  Swinburne  had  never  a  better 
excuse  for  repetition  and  for  progress  by  addi- 
tion, than  in  the  doxology  where  he  bids  the 
winds  and  all  things,  and  one  by  one  the  cities 
of  Italy,  praise  INIazzini,  "  the  fair  clear  supreme 
spirit  without  stain."  If  there  be  such  a  thing 
as  religious  poetry,  this  is  religious,  ending  in 
hopes  for  "  a  bloodless  and  a  bondless  world," 
Freedom  and  the  "  fair  republic,"  an  earth 
"  kingdomless,"  "  throneless,"  "  chainless." 

The  theme  of  A  Song  of  Italy  is  magnificent ; 
the  poet's  mood  of  grave  sweetness  and  a  kind 
of  dark  joy  fulness  is  worthy  of  it,  and  is  above 
thinking  too  much  of  priests  and  kings,  "  creeds 
and  crimes " ;  his  words  and  rhythms  have  a 
religious  sensuousness.  But  it  is  a  poem  that 
ought  not  to  be  read,  as  most  often  it  has  to  be, 
dispassionately  in  a  study,  instead  of  being 
chanted  by  some  impersonal  priest  or  priestess. 

128 


SONGS    OF    TWO    NATIONS 

So  chanted,  the  rhythm,  the  majestic  images 
and  words — hardly  a  word  is  used  without  sug- 
gesting either  subhmity  of  hope  and  sorrow, 
or  sharply  contrasted  qualities — should  be  com- 
parable for  effect  to  the  greatest  passages  of  a 
religious  service,  that  is  among  those  for  whom 
Freedom  and  Italy  mean  something  spiritually 
vast.     Freedom  saying : 

Though  God  forget  thee,  I  will  not  forget  .  .  .  ; 

the  "  hundred  cities'  mouths  in  one "  praising 
the  "  supreme  son  "  of  Italy ;  the  poet  bidding 
her 

Let  not  one  tongue  of  theirs  who  hate  thee  say 
That  thou  wast  even  as  they.  .  .  . 

these  should  make  a  joyful  and  noble  sound 
in  any  temple  of  Liberty  or  Fraternity. 

At  present  there  is  no  such  temple.  The 
poem  must  be  read  by  isolated  citizens  of  the 
world  in  places  which  A  Song  of  Italy  will  not 
convert  into  temples.  There  the  words  will 
at  least  gain  nothing  by  the  reverberation  which 
they  might  so  well  set  up  amongst  a  multitude 
assembled.  Closer  and  quieter  inspection  will 
reveal  a  hundred  beautiful  things,  and  an  even 
grace,  a  thrilling  purity,  hardly  to  be  found  in 
any  other  poem  of  Swinburne's.  At  no  point 
is  it  lacking  in  dignity  and  fairness.  But  the 
I  129 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

whole  is  not  equal  to  the  sum  of  the  admirable 
parts.  To  have  been  as  great  as  its  aim,  it 
should  have  been  more  than  equal.  It  does  not 
justify  its  length  by  a  pervading,  continuous 
and  accumulating  passion,  which  could  absorb 
until  a  second  or  third  reading  the  pleasure  of 

O  chosen,  O  pure  and  just. 
Who  counted  for  a  small  thing  life's  estate, 
And  died  and  made  it  great.  .   .   . 


of 


This  is  that  very  Italy  which  was 
And  is  and  shall  not  pass. 


Whether  all  these  clear  beauties  would  count 
were  the  song  publicly  declaimed  can  hardly 
be  imagined.  In  private  reading  they  cannot 
be  missed.  They  seem  of  too  fine  and  delicate 
a  kind  for  a  structure  of  this  magnitude. 
Neither  is  this  delicate  quality  everywhere 
effectual.  The  opening,  for  example,  is  defaced 
by  some  of  Swinburne's  characteristic  mixture 
of  precision  and  obscurity,  as  when  he  sees 

the  hours 
As  maidens,  and  the  days  as  labouring  men. 

And  the  soft  nights  again 
As  wearied  women  to  their  own  souls  wed. 

And  ages  as  the  dead. 

Tn  the  doxology  he  gives  way  to  the  temptation 
to   appeal    to   such    different   things  as  winds, 

130 


SONGS    OF    TWO    NATIONS 

light,  storm,  summer,  shore,  wave,  skies,  graves, 
hopes,  memories,  years,  sounds,  sorrow,  joy, 
human  beings  dead  and  ahve.  Therefore,  when 
he  comes  to  "  dews  and  rains "  it  is  hardly 
possible  not  to  be  impatient  of  what  is  so  like 
in  its  weakness  and  so  unlike  in  its  strength 
to  the  great  original,  "  O  all  ye  Works  of  the 
Lord,  bless  ye  the  Lord  :  praise  him  and  magnify 
him  for  ever."  Swinburne  sacrifices  the  regularity 
of  the  original,  but  takes  only  a  licentious  and 
occasional  freedom.  The  objects  addressed,  of 
very  different  classes,  are  multipHed  to  excess ; 
and  some  are  treated  with  a  fancy  natural  to 
the  poet,  and  both  brilliant  and  appropriate, 
as  in 

Red  hills  of  flame,  white  Alps^  green  Apennines, 

Banners  of  blowing  pines. 
Standards  of  stormy  snows,  flags  of  light  leaves, 

Three  wherewith  Freedom  weaves 
One  ensign  that  once  woven  and  once  unfurled 

Makes  day  of  all  a  world. 
Makes  blind  their  eyes  who  knew  not,  and  outbraves 

The  waste  of  iron  waves.  .  .  . 

It  is  a  fancy  that  helps  to  undermine  the 
structure  both  of  the  whole  and  of  the  doxo- 
logical  portion,  though  it  adds  to  the  pleasures 
by  the  way.  Thus  the  poem  is  the  work  of 
Swinburne  partly  as  an  isolated  lyrist  and  partly 
also  as  a  national,  pubHc,  or  social  poet.  His 
attempt  to  make  the  two  one  was  glorious  ;  but 

131 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

whether  any  modern  poet  wliatever  could  have 
succeeded  in  it  or  in  any  similar  one  is  doubtful. 
If  any  has  done,  it  is  Tennyson  in  his  Ode  on 
the  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  and 
perhaps  Whitman ;  but  then  Whitman  is  the 
intimate  and  equal  of  everything  and  everyone 
in  his  poetry,  writing  of  what  he  has  touched 
and  understood,  moving  freely  and  cheerfully  in 
and  out.  Swinburne  seems  to  be  definitely 
assuming  a  part ;  he  has  come  from  outside  to 
celebrate  men  and  events  of  which  I  cannot  feel 
that  he  was  the  equal,  save  in  ardour,  and  this 
ardour  has  a  certain  thinness  and  shrillness. 
When  he  had  to  call  up  city  after  city  to  praise 
JSIazzini,  only  a  manly  grasp  of  reality  could 
have  saved  him  from  the  too  "  poetical "  style  in 
which  differentiation  was  impossible ;  so  to  this 
he  gave  way.  His  task  was  a  more  difficult  one 
than  Shelley's,  who,  in  the  Ode  to  Naples,  for 
example,  is  a  solitary  man  expressing  private 
imaginings  which  must  succeed  or  fail  with  very 
little  help  from  aciual  events  and  places.  Swin- 
burne, surrendering  himself  and  his  personality, 
appeals  to  us,  as  it  were,  with  an  impersonation 
of  Freedom,  Italy,  Rome :  he  was  in  a  public 
capacity,  his  poem  was  addressed  to  a  public 
man,  and  to  the  general  eye  and  ear.  He  per- 
sonified Italy  and  Freedom  and  gave  them  words 
to  utter :  he  used  as  a  model  a  poem  which  was 

132 


SONGS    OF    TWO    NATIONS 

not  private,  nor  the  work  of  an  isolated  man. 
His  song,  with  all  its  fire,  grace,  and  strength, 
falls  short  only  of  a  kind  of  perfection  which  no 
private  stranger  with  one  lyric  impulse,  how- 
soever divine,  could  possibly  achieve. 

Freedom  and  revolution  aiming  at  freedom 
had  come  to  mean  for  Swinburne  something 
very  much  what  light  and  the  sea  meant.  His 
early  Song  in  Time  of  Order  shows  him  in  a 
mood  like  that  which  sent  Byron  and  Landor 
and  Tennyson  towards  real  fighting.  The  song 
is  sung  at  the  launching  of  a  boat  to  carry  the 
lovers  of  freedom  out  to  sea,  away  from  a  land 
ruled  by  a  king  : 

Out  to  the  sea  with  her  thei*e, 

Out  with  her  over  the  sand, 
Let  the  kings  keep  the  earth  for  their  share  ! 

W^e  have  done  with  the  sharers  of  land. 

There  are  but  three  of  them,  but  "  while  three 
men  hold  together  the  kingdoms  are  less  by 
three,"  and  they  rejoice  in  the  rain  in  their  hair 
and  the  foam  on  their  lips.  This  eagerness  was 
in  the  spirit  of  Byron's 

Yet  Freedom,  yet  thy  banner  torn  but  flying 
Streams  hke  a  thunderstorm  against  the  wind.   .   .  . 

and  Shelley's 

Let  there  be  hght !  said  Liberty. 

Putting    behind    him    Dolores,    Faustine,    and 

133 


A.    C.    S  W  I  N  B  U  R  N  E 

Felise,   Swinburne   dedicated    to    Freedom   tlie 
little  time  given  to  men : 

A  little  time  that  we  may  fill 

Or  with  such  good  works  or  such  ill 

As  loose  the  bonds  or  make  them  strong 

Wherein  all  manhood  suHers  wron<f. 
By  rose-hung  river  and  light  foot-rill 

There  are  who  rest  not ;  who  think  long 
Till  they  discern  as  from  a  hill 

At  the  sun's  hour  of  morning  song, 
Known  of  souls  only,  and  those  souls  free. 
The  sacred  spaces  of  the  sea. 

But  for  the  more  than  metaphorical  relation- 
ship to  light  and  the  sea  Swinburne's  freedom 
might  command  our  respect,  but  certainly  not 
our  attention  throughout  Songs  Before  Sunrhe 
and  his  later  poems.  Unless  his  Freedom  gains 
sublimity  or  lustre  from  the  associations  with 
eternal  things  it  cannot  but  be  held  lightly  after 
a  time  save  by  bigots.  To  those  fighting  in  the 
cause  of  Italian  unity  the  words  "  Freedom," 
"  Liberty,"  and  "  Republic,"  may  have  had  the 
same  value  as  certain  other  words  at  religious 
revivals.  These  exalted  values  may  or  may  not 
be  false ;  it  is  certain  that  they  do  not  give  ever- 
lasting life  to  hymns  or  poems.  It  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  find  v^erses  where  one  of  these  words  is 
used  much  as  other  words  are  used  in  hymns, 
as,  for  example,  in  Tenebra;,  in  the  verse  : 

134 


SONGS    OF    TWO    NATIONS 

There  all  chains  are  undone  ; 

Day  there  seems  but  as  night ; 
Spirit  and  sense  are  as  one 
In  the  light  not  of  star  nor  of  sun  ; 

Liberty  there  is  the  light. 

*'  Spirit  and  sense  "  gives  no  help.  Swinburne's 
great  admiration  for  Shakespeare's  phrase,  "spirit 
of  sense,"  caused  him  to  repeat  and  vary  it  be- 
yond all  reason  both  in  prose  and  verse. 

In  Qioia  Multum  Amavit  Freedom  speaks, 
calling  itself  first,  "  God,  the  spirit  of  man," 
and  next,  "  Freedom,  God  and  man,"  which  is 
very  much  like  popular  poetical  theology.  Free- 
dom is  God  and  also  "  the  spirit  of  earth,"  the 
"earth  soul,"  the  only  God,  in  the  poem  to 
Whitman.  Saluting  her,  as  "  God  above  all 
Gods  "  and  "  light  above  light,  law  beyond  law," 
Swinburne  declares  himself  to  be  her  harp  and 
her  clarion,  her  storm  thrush,  having  heard  her 
and  seen  her  coming  before  ever  her  wheels 
"  divide  the  sky  and  sea."  The  3Icirching  Song 
speaks  of  Freedom  "whence  all  good  things 
are."  She  is  the  "  most  holy  one  " — in  The  In- 
surrection in  Candia — who  will  "  cleanse  earth 
of  crime."  He  does  not  succeed  in  giving  the 
word  a  high  and  distinct  value  by  transferring 
to  it  a  value  more  often  connected  with  Jehovah 
or  one  of  the  other  deities,  though  unconsciously 
from  the  context  of  aspiring  and  exulting  words 

135 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

it  acquires  a  vaguely  religious  sense  correspond- 
ing to  that  with  which  it  thrills  perhaps  the 
majority  of  men.  lovers  of  Shelley  or  not ;  and 
it  may  do  more  than  this  for  men  of  any  sect 
that  responds  at  once  to  the  sentiment  of  A 
Years  Burden : 

There  should  be  no  more  wars  nor  kingdoms  won.  .  .  . 

A  man  belonging  to  no  sect  must  feel  that  here 
and  on  almost  every  page  of  Songs  Before  Sun- 
rise Swinburne  is  either  addressing  a  sect  or 
starting  one. 

Throughout  the  book  Swinburne  applies 
Christian  terms  to  his  own  purposes.  Whatever 
Christians  may  feel,  no  one  else  can  see  more 
than  a  naive  and  showy  compliment  in  the  end 
of  the  Hymn  to  Man  : 

Glory  to  Man  in  the   Highest !   for  Man  is  the  master  of 
things. 

To  say  that  "  all  men  born  are  mortal,  but  not 
man,"  as  he  does  in  The  Pilgiims,  if  ingenious, 
is  nothing  more,  being  a  matter  of  words  only. 
To  compare  men  favourably  with  the  gods, 
ancient  and  modern,  is  just,  and  can  be  both 
amusing  and  inspiriting,  but  assertion  and  as- 
severation is  not  beyond  the  strength  of  propa- 
gandists, though  commonly  they  have  not  the 
solemn  tones  to  pronounce  for  them,  as  in  On 

136 


SONGS    OF    TWO    NATIONS 

the  Downs,  that  there  is  no  God  but  man.  The 
poet's  abuse  of  God  does  not  help  the  word 
when  appUed  to  man,  as  in  A  Years  Burden : 

Thy  thought,  thy  word,  O  soul  repubHcan, 
O  spirit  of  hfe,  O  God  whose  name  is  man  : 
What  sea  of  sorrows  but  thy  sight  shall  span  ? 
Cry  wellaway,  but  well  befall  the  right. 

Here  nearly  all  Swinburne's  favourite  significant 
words  are  confused,  inextricably  if  not  sublimely. 
"Cry  wellaway,  but  well  befall  the  right"  is 
repeated  six  times  as  a  burden  to  the  verses, 
and  the  poetical  "wellaway,"  especially  in  a 
burden,  first  demands,  and  then  at  last  almost 
creates,  a  sensuousness  overpowering  words  like 
"republican."  Fortunately,  these  words  are  often 
overpowered  and  reduced  to  the  value  of  their 
sounds.  It  would  be  pedantic  and  a  proof  of 
viperish  deafness  to  inquire  into  the  verse  of 
Siena  for  example : 

Let  there  be  light,  O  Italy  ! 

For  our  feet  falter  in  the  night. 
O  lamp  of  living  years  to  be, 

O  hght  of  God,  let  there  be  light ! 
Fill  with  a  love  keener  than  flame 
Men  sealed  in  spirit  with  thy  name. 
The  cities  and  the  Roman  skies. 

Light  is  everywhere  in  Songs  Before  Sunrise, 
the  light  of  the  sun  and  the  light  of  Swinburne's 

137 


A     C.    SWINBURNE 

Ii<,^lit-loving   spirit,    us    in    the   ciul    of    On    the 

Doicns : 

And  the  sun  smote  the  clouds  and  slew, 
And  from  the  sun  the  sea's  breath  blew, 

And  white  waves  lauifhtd  and  turned  and  fled 
The  long  green  heaving  seafield  through, 

And  on  them  overheard 

The  sky  burnt  red.   .  .   . 

Possibly  this  end  would  gain  were  "  time's  deep 
dawn "  to  have  a  spiritual  meaning  both  clear 
and  powerful ;  certainly  it  is  too  closely  allied 
to  the  splendour  of  the  physical  sun  to  fail  of 
being  poetry.  Many  poems  like  the  Eve  of 
Revolution  are  saved  from  simple  dullness  by 
the  actual  and  figurative  presence  of  "the  four 
winds  of  the  world,"  and  by  that  metrical  energy 
which  is  not  unworthy  of  wind  and  sun.  Poem 
after  poem  is  worth  much  or  nothing  according 
as  the  reader  can  take  the  first  line  or  verse  as 
a  keynote  and  then  allow  the  metre  to  sing,  with 
occasional  guidance  from  the  words  "  light," 
"men,"  "sea,"  "thundering,"  "sleep,"  "weep," 
"sword,"  "grave,"  "time,"  "crown,"  etc.  Not 
that  they  are  to  be  regarded  as  majestic  non- 
sense rhymes,  for  they  treat  grave  matters 
gravely  and  grammatically.  But  the  writer 
trusts  more  than  usual  to  his  metre  and  his 
rhymes ;  the  interspaces  are  filled  more  loosely 
with  words.     This  looseness  is  guided  by  rules 

138 


SONGS    OF    TWO    NATIONS 

of  sound,  but  sometimes  of  dignity.  Thus 
where  Browning  sings : 

Hands  from  the  pasty,  nor  bite  take  nor  sup  ; 

Swinburne  says  in  The  Insurrection  in  Candia : 

Let  wine  be  far  from  the  mouth. 

In  his  Marching  Song  the  singers  have  with 
them  the  morning  star,  the  dayspring — "  even 
all  the  fresh  daysprings  " — and  "  all  the  multi- 
tude of  things,"  also  winds,  fountains,  mountains, 
and  not  the  moon  but  the  mist  which  lies  in  the 
valley,  "  muffled  from  the  moon,"  also  highlands 
and  lowlands,  and  sea  bays,  shoals,  islands,  cliffs, 
fields,  rivers,  grass,  haze,  and  not  the  hills  but 
the  peace  "  at  heart  of  hills,"  also  all  sights  and 
sounds,  all  lights,  also  the  nightingale,  and  "the 
heart  and  secret  of  the  worldly  tale."  The 
point  is  that  Swinburne  writes  in  such  a  manner 
that  the  feebleness  of  the  last  phrase  does  not 
tell  against  him  but  is  absorbed,  contributing  to 
the  whole  a  certain  cadence  and  the  rhyme 
"  ale."  It  is  not  absurd  for  Swinburne  to  make 
Spain  speak  of  her  "  sins  and  sons  "  being  dis- 
persed through  sinless  lands :  it  is  not  out  of 
key,  and  does  not  prevent  us  from  admiring  the 
words  that  follow,  to  describe  how  those  sins 
made  the  name  of  man  accursed,  that  of  God 
thrice  accursed. 

Two  pages  afterwards  Switzerland  speaks  of 
139 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

'•'  snows  and  souls,"  considerably  lowering  the 
value  of  "  souls  "  for  the  plodding  reader,  who 
is  not  blinded  by  the  pomp  of  the  Litany. 
Even  the  reader  too  wise  to  plod  is  not  content 
with  a  trick,  such  as  that  in  "  before  any  world 
liad  any  light,"  when  it  is  repeated  as  this  is 
three  times  within  seven  verses  {Genesis) ;  but 
he  will  recognize  too  that  the  parallelism  of 

Slowlier  than  life  into  breath, 
Surelier  than  time  into  death.  .   .  . 

in  To  Walt  IFhitJiian  in  America  had  never  so 
consistent  a  setting  in  prose  or  poetry  before 
Swinburne's  time.  At  its  best  this  style  makes 
its  own  terms,  and  often  in  long  series  of  lines, 
beginning  perhaps  with  the  same  word,  "  By  "  or 
"  Ah,"  as  like  one  another  as  wave  to  wave,  the 
verse  advances  magnificently,  in  stateliness,  or 
turbulence,  or  eager  speed.  There  is  no  other 
poetry  where  the  substance  is  so  subdued  to  the 
musical  form  of  verse.  It  is  not  thought  set  to^ 
music,  but  music  which  has  absorbed  thought./ 
Far  less  than  Shelley's  will  it  permit  paraphrase. 
By  comparison,  the  Ode  to  Liberty  is  massive 
with  thought  and  history,  and  the  rhyme 
seems  a  fortunate  accident.  In  The  Song  of 
the  Standard,  in  Hertha,  in  Monotones,  in 
Messidor,  in  Tenebra;,  in  A  Watch  of  the 
Night,  for  example,  the  metre  and  rhyme  make 
of  each  verse  a  spiritual  being  that  never  existed 

140 


SONGS    OF    TWO    NATIONS 

before,  and  has  no  existence  except  when  evoked 
by  an  exact  repetition  of  each  word.  Where 
the  thought  demands  separate  attention  it  fails, 
as  in  the  verse  which  asks  to  be  visuaUzed,  and 
cannot,  in  On  the  Downs  : 

As  a  queen  taken  and  stripped  and  bound 
Sat  earth  discoloured  and  discrowned  ; 

As  a  king's  palace  empty  and  dead 
The  sky  was^  without  light  or  sound. 

And  on  the  summer's  head 

Were  ashes  shed. 

The  relative  positions  of  earth,  sky,  and  summer 
can  be  settled  by  no  diplomacy.  Sometimes 
even  an  indiscretion  refuses  to  sink  out  of  sight 
in  the  music,  as  in  Quia  3Iultum  Amavit,  when 
"  lordly  "  is  appHed  to  "  laughter  "  on  one  page 
as  a  word  of  credit,  and  on  the  next  "  lies  and 
lords"  are  handcuffed  together.  The  vague 
is  not  of  necessity  unfriendly,  but  a  line  in 
Tiresias  like 

Order  of  things,  and  rule  and  guiding  song 

is  apt  to  detach  itself  There  is  also  a  large 
class  of  comparisons,  such  as  "  A  sound  sublimer 
than  the  heavens  are  high,"  which  are  preten- 
tious and  under  no  circumstances  effectual :  the 
constant  figurative  use  of  "  clothe  "  has  no  force. 
Even  verbosity  can  seem  a  vice  when  it  makes 
the  line 

But  heart  there  is  not,  tongue  there  is  not  found.  .  .  . 
141 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

And  language  is  not  even  a  beautiful  disease 
in  the  lines : 

O  thouglit  illimitable  and  infinite  heart 
Whose  blood  is  life  in  limbs  indissolute 

That  still  keeps  hurtless  thy  invisible  part 
And  inextirpable  thy  viewless  root.   .  .  . 

The  risks  run  in  this  adv^enture  were  great ; 
it  is  not  wonderful  that  they  proved  sometimes 
too  great.  That  a  volume  coming  only  a  few 
years  after  Poems  and  Ballads  should  have  been 
so  fully  consecrated  to  Liberty,  using  Love 
only  for  images  of  "  bride  "  and  "  bridegroom  " 
and  the  like,  is  alone  a  superb  proof  of  the 
poet's  devotion,  but  it  is  of  small  account  when 
compared  to  the  positive  proofs — the  splendour 
and  variety  of  metre  and  imagery,  the  ardour 
that  changes  and  never  abates. 

In  these  same  years  Swinburne  wrote  other 
political  poems  which  were  printed  with  A  Song 
of  Italij  in  Songs  of  Two  Natiojis.  They  in- 
clude a  long  Ode  on  the  Proclamation  of  the 
French  Repuljlic :  September  Mh,  1S70,  and  a 
number  of  sonnets  concerning,  among  others, 
"  the  worm  Napoleon."  The  ode  shows  that 
already  he  ran  the  danger  of  becoming  poet 
laureate  of  Freedom,  laboriously  delirious.  The 
sonnets  made  him  conscious  that  perhaps  "  wrath 
embittered  the  sweet  mouth  of  song."     He  had 

142 


SONGS    OF    TWO    NATIONS 

not  the  same  regard  for  himself  as  he  had  for 
Italy  when  he  bade  her 

Let  not  one  tongue  of  theirs  who  hate  thee  say 
That  thou  wert  even  as  they.  .  .   . 

The  hissing,  spitting,  and  cursing  is  the  frantic 
abuse  of  a  partisan,  which  is  the  worse  and  not 
the  better  for  being  done  in  the  name  of  liberty. 
It  is  a  dead  relic  of  1870,  proving  that  Swin- 
burne was  not  of  Shelley's  or  Byron's  stature. 
He  speaks  of  "  our  blood "  and  "  ow  tears," 
but  the  vomit  is  his  own.  His  spirit  is  less 
that  of  Dante  condemning  men  to  Hell  than 
of  Judge  Lynch.  But  the  worst  of  these 
sonnets  is  that  they  will  support  any  doubts  of 
Swinburne's  right  and  power  to  sing  what  he 
strove  to  sing  in  Songs  Before  Sunrise  and 
Songs  of  Tvco  Nations,  since  it  is  almost  in- 
credible that  the  same  man  should  have  room 
for  so  much  love  of  liberty  as  well  as  so  much 
hate  of  Napoleon.  Swinburne  continued  to 
hate  Gods,  priests  and  kings,  though  often  with 
deep  respect  and  love  of  Christ,  even  to  the 
days  of  the  South  African  War,  when  noble 
blood  and  patriotism  swamped  his  love  of 
Liberty  without  noticing  it.  He  wrote  a  poem 
"for  the  feast  of  Giordano  Bruno,  philosopher 
and  martyr,"  coupling  his  name  with  Lucretius, 
Sidney    and    Shelley,    saying    that    surely    his 

143 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

*'  spirit  of  sense "  liad  gone  up  to  meet  their 
spirits.  He  abused  the  Czar.  He  praised 
Kossuth.  He  wrote  Lines  on  the  Monument 
of  Giuseppe  Mazzini,  once  more  saying  that 
IMazzini  was  greater  than  his  fellow-townsman 
Columbus.  When  the  "  shadows  fallen  of  years 
were  nine  since  heaven  grew  seven  times  more 
divine "  at  JNIazzini's  entry,  Swinburne  again 
addressed  him — "  as  very  Christ "  but  not 
"  degraded  into  deity."  The  Saturday  Re- 
view's opinion  that,  "as  a  matter  of  fact,  no 
man  living,  or  who  ever  lived — not  Caesar  or 
Pericles,  not  Shakespeare  or  Michael  Angelo — 
could  confer  honour  more  than  he  took  on 
entering  the  House  of  Lords "  moved  him  to 
write  Vos  Deos  Laudcunus :  Tlie  Conservative 
Journalisfs  National  Anthem,  beginning: 

O  Lords  our  Gods  .  .  . 

Because  "What  England  says  her  lords  unsay" 
he  wrote : 

Clear  the  way  my  lords  and  lackeys  ! 

and  was  not  above  reminding  the  lords,  for  the 
sake  of  readers  of  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  that : 

Lust  and  falsehood,  craft  and  trafiic,  precedent  and  gold, 
Tongue  of  courtier,  kiss  of  harlot,  promise  bought  and  sold, 
Gave  you  heritage  of  empire  over  thralls  of  old. 

Nell  Gwynn  had  drawn  a  sonnet  from  him  to 
Our  lAidij  of  Laughter  and  Our  Ladij  of  Pity, 

144 


SONGS    OF    TWO    NATIONS 

but  even  she  could  not  save  the  dukes  from 
being  reminded  that  they  were  : 

Graces  by  grace  of  such  mothers 
As  brightened  the  bed  of  King  Charles.   .  .  . 
Bright  sons  of  sublime  prostitution. 

Landor's  centenary  reminded  him  of  "  Milton's 
white  republic  undefiled,"  and  the  fact  that 
Song's  "  fires  are  quenched  when  Freedom's  are." 
Of  Landor  he  could  still  say  : 

.  .  .  Of  all  souls  for  all  time  glorious  none 

Loved  Freedom  better,  of  all  who  have  loved  her  best. 

Still  as  in  the  days  when  Landor  promised  a 
money  payment  to  the  family  of  the  first  patriot 
to  assert  the  dignity  and  fulfil  the  duty  of 
tyrannicide,  he  could  hail  Felice  Orsini  with  the 
double  honours :  "  Patriot  and  Tyrannicide." 
An  ode  was  addressed  to  Athens,  showing  that 
the  Greeks  were  Swinburne's  Gods  : 

Gods  for  us  are  all  your  fathers,  even  the  least  of  these  are 
Gods,  .  .  . 

and  yet  he  laughed  at  other  "  Creed-wrought 
faith  of  faithless  souls  that  mock  their  doubts 
with  creeds." 

Of  more  recent   Gods   he  went  on  praising 
Hugo,  comparing  him  with  Christ  and  Prome- 
theus, and  hailing  him  as  King,  comforter  and 
prophet,  Paraclete  and  poet.     In  1882  on  the 
K  145 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

subject  of  the  Russian  persecution  of  Jews  he 
appealed  to  Christ  to  know  if  it  had  not  been  his 
passion  "  to  foreknow  in  death's  worst  hour  the 
works  of  Christian  men."  The  suggested 
Channel  tunnel  was  to  him  a  "  pursy  dream  " 
of  "  vile  vain  greed,"  which  could  not  link  the 
two  nations ;  nor  could  anything  save  "  union 
only  of  trust  and  loving  heart."  King,  priest,  or 
God  made  no  difference  to  his  love  of  England 
any  more  than  of  Eton  : 

Where  the  footfall  sounds  of  England^  where  the  smile  of 

England  shines, 
Rings  the  tread  and  laughs  the  face  of  freedom,  fair  as  hope 

divines 
Days  to  be,  more  brave  than  ours  and  lit  by  lordlier  stars  for 

signs. 
All  our  past  acclaims  our  future :  Shakespeare's  voice  and 

Nelson's  hand, 
Milton's   faith   and  Wordsworth's  trust  in  this  our  chosen 

and  chainless  land. 
Bear  us  witness :  come  the  world  against  her,  England  yet 

shall  stand. 

The  question  of  Home  Rule  for  Ireland  naturally, 
therefore,  moved  him  to  assert  in  Astrophel  that 

Three  in  one,  but  one  in  three, 
God,  who  girt  her  with  the  sea, 
Bade  our  Commonweal  to  be.  .  .  . 

The  jubilee  of  1887  earned  from  him  a  loyal 
poem  which  bade  earth  and  sea  join  the  ''just 

146 


SONGS    OF    TA¥0    NATIONS 

and  sacred  jubilation."  When  he  was  thirty 
England  was  "  among  the  faded  nations  "  because 
that  was  the  conventional  view  of  a  republican. 
Patriotism  destroyed  his  dreams  as  if  they  had 
never  existed :  foreign  nations  became  "  dark 
Muscovy  reptile  in  rancour,"  "  base  Germany, 
blatant  in  guile " ;  the  people  became  "  blind 
ranks  and  bellowing  votes " ;  Ireland  was 
*'  murderous  Ireland."  He  was  inclined  more 
and  more  to  bestow  the  title  of  Cant  on  any- 
thing beyond  a  general  love  of  liberty  and  justice. 
Thus  in  Ast7'ophel  he  sang  without  a  smile : 

Lovelier  than  thy  seas  are  strong. 
Glorious  Ireland,  sword  and  song 
Gird  and  crown  thee  :  none  may  wrong. 
Save  thy  sons  alone. 

Thus  with  a  smile,  in  1876,  he  sang  in  A  Ballad 
of  Bulgarie : 

The  gentle  knight,  Sir  John  de  Bright, 

(Of  Brummageme  was  he,) 
Forth  would  he  prance  with  lifted  lance 

For  love  of  Bulgarie. 
No  lance  in  hand  for  other  land 

Sir  Bright  would  ever  take  ; 
For  wicked  works,  save  those  of  Turks, 

No  head  of  man  would  break  ; 
But  that  Bulgarie  should  not  be  free. 

This  made  his  high  heart  quake.   .   .   . 

presumably  also  with  a  smile  in  1889,  about 
Parnell,  in  A  Ballad  of  Truthjul  Charles  : 

147 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

Charles  Stuart  the  crownless  kinj^  whose  hand 
Sways  Erin's  sceptre — so  they  sing, 
The  bards  of  holy  Liarland.   .  .   . 

Swinburne  was  then  fifty-two.  Both  before 
and  after  this  he  gave  reason  to  believe  that 
accident  had  consecrated  to  Liberty,  Love  and 
Peace  a  nature  that  miglit  have  sung  Tyranny, 
Hate  and  War  with  equal  bigotry.  It  was  not, 
however,  permitted  to  him  to  go  farther  than  to 
say  first  that  the  English  are  a  people  '*  that 
never  at  heart  was  not  inly  free,"  and  are  "  the 
first  of  the  races  of  men  who  behold  unashamed 
the  sun  " ;  and  second  that  "  none  but  we  .  .  . 
hear  in  heart  the  breathless  bright  watchword 
of  the  sea,"  and  moreover  that  "  never  was  man 
born  free"  on  the  other  side  of  the  Channel. 
Side  by  side  with  this  strain  ran  that  other  of 
general  hope : 

See  the  light  of  manhood  rise  in  the  twilight  of  the  Gods ; 
and : 

Not  for  gain  of  heaven  may  man  put  away  the  rule  of  light. 

The  Englishman  and  the  universal  brother  in 
Swinburne  were  entirely  different  and  distinct, 
like  soldier  and  priest.  Hardly  a  second  time 
did  he  find  the  grave  mellow  note  of  Two 
Leaders  where  he  salutes  two  "  prophets  of  past 
kind,"  "high   souls  that  hate  us,"   men  whom 

148 


SONGS    OF    TWO    NATIONS 

he  thought  reactionary  children  of  night  but 
honourable : 

Pass  with  the  stars  and  leave  us  with  the  sun. 

The  note  is  worthy  of  Wordsworth  or  Tenny- 
son at  his  best,  but  in  Swinburne  it  seems  almost 
an  accident  of  temper,  in  a  moment  of  freedom 
from  the  obsession  of  Liberty. 


149 


VII 

LATER    POEMS:     CHARACTERISTICS 

After  So?igs  Before  Siuirise  and  Songs  of  7\vo 
Nations,  Liberty  gave  Swinburne  little  help 
towards  the  making  of  poetry.  His  poems  in 
future  were  to  be  laid  before  many  Gods,  in- 
cluding Liberty,  Love,  and  Sin,  but  Music 
before  all.  In  1878  appeared  a  second  series  of 
Poems  and  Ballads,  in  1880  Songs  of  the  Spiing- 
tides  and  Studies  in  Song,  in  1882  Tristram  of 
Lyonessc,  in  1883  A  Century  of  Roundels,  in  1884 
A  3Iidsu?nmer  Holiday,  in  1894  Astro2)hel,  in 
1896  IVie  Tale  of  Baku,  in  1904  A  Channel 
Passage.  Except  the  two  narratives,  T'ristram 
and  Balen,  none  of  these  books  was  so  much  of 
a  piece  as  Songs  Before  Sunrise  or  even  as 
Poems  and  Ballads :  A  Century  of  Roundels 
comes  nearest  because  all  the  poems  are  in 
similar  forms. 

Altogether,  hardly  any  of  our  poets  have 
written  more  short  poems,  save  those  like 
Herrick,  who  wrote  many  of  only  a  few  lines 
apiece.  This  multitude  includes  Latin,  French, 
and  border  dialect   poems,  narratives,  descrip- 

150 


LATER    POEMS 

tions,  odes,  poems  of  reflection  and  of  passion 
and  of  both,  and  some  translations.  But  the 
great  variety  of  forms  and  subjects  is  no  obstacle 
to  one  fairly  clear  but  accidental  division.  On 
the  one  hand  lie  perhaps  the  only  poems  which 
have  a  distinguishable  subject,  those  confessedly 
connected  with  a  particular  person,  place,  or 
event:  these  include  the  political  poems,  the 
poems  relating  to  men,  whether  friends  or  great 
men,  hving  and  dead ;  and  with  these  go  the 
translations.  On  the  other  hand  lie  those 
poems  which  essentially  exist  in  Swinburne's 
books  or  in  the  memories  of  his  lovers  and 
nowhere  else,  and  have  no  important  connection 
with  anything  outside — poems  which  at  their 
best  could  not  be  paraphrased  or  abridged  or 
represented  by  anything  but  themselves,  which 
could  hardly  be  thought  of  as  better  or  worse 
than  they  are  or  in  any  way  different. 

The  second  class  is  superior  to  the  first, 
because  as  a  rule  either  Swinburne  abated  his 
style  for  the  sake  of  things  known  to  the  world, 
or  he  made  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  envelop 
them  in  it.  The  best  example  of  this  failure  is 
the  poem  entitled  A  Channel  Passage,  which  is  a 
travel  sketch  in  verse,  and  never  does  more  than 
remind  us  that  the  actual  scene  was  one  of 
uncommon  magnificence.  The  poet  calls  the 
steamer  a  " steam-souled  ship"  and  the  same 

151 


A.  c.  swinburnp: 

translation  of  reality  into  poetry — to  put  it  in  a 
crude  intelligible  way — is  the  essence  and  the 
fatal  fault  of  the  poem.  Whenever  art  allows  a 
comparison  with  nature,  wherever  nature  in- 
trudes in  her  own  purity  and  majesty,  art  fails. 
Uniformity  of  illusion  is  a  condition  of  success. 
In  A  Channel  Passage  there  is  hardly  any 
illusion  :  it  is  a  man  being  poetical  on  a  steamer, 
which  is  no  less  and  no  more  absurd  than  being 
poetical  in  an  omnibus ;  but  being  poetical  is 
not  poetry. 

Stern  and   prow  plunged    under,  alternate :    a   glimpse,   a 

recoil,  a  breath. 
As  she  sprang  as  the  life  in  a  god  made  man  would  spring  at 

the  throat  of  death.  .  .   . 

is  a  versification  and  rhetorical  treatment  of 
notes,  whether  in  a  pocket-book  or  not.  The 
prose  description  of  the  same  scene  in  Essays 
and  Studies  is  brief  and  suggestive  and  humane. 
The  poem  is  an  inhuman  perversion  of  language 
and  metre. 

The  Lake  of  Gaube  in  the  same  volume  is 
also  founded  upon  an  actual,  perhaps  a  single, 
experience,  with  an  entirely  different  result. 
The  experience  has  been  digested ;  the  illusion 
is  complete,  and  no  comparison  with  the  lake 
itself  possible  except  as  a  late  afterthought  to 
those  who  know  it ;  the  same  world,  Swinburne's 
world,  is  with  us  from  the  first  words,  *'  The 

152 


LATER    POEMS 

sun  is  lord  and  god,"  until  the  last.  Swinburne's 
style  touches  actual  detail  only  at  its  peril. 
When  he  speaks  of"  one  sweet  glad  hawthorn,"  a 
**  dyke's  trenched  edge,"  *'  the  steep  sweet  bank," 
and  "  the  dense  bright  oval  wall  of  box  in- 
wound,"  he  can  seldom  avert  the  fatal  com- 
parison. It  gives  occasion  for  the  just  and 
cruel  smile  at  the  poet  "  turning  beautiful  things 
into  poetry,"  as  the  world  says.  There  are  poets 
who  can  speak  of  "when  the  northering  road 
faced  westward  "  and  "  as  the  dawn  leapt  in  at 
my  casement,"  but  Swinburne  cannot.  After 
them  the  various  metrical  forms  of  Loch 
Torridon,  and  the  excited  words,  can  do  no 
more  than  show  us  a  composition  in  an  inter- 
mediate stage,  between  a  memory  and  a  poem. 
Lines  like  these : 

But  never  a  roof  for  shelter 
And  never  a  sign  for  guide 
Rose  doubtful  or  visible.  .  .  . 

can  be  translated  into  prose,  and  have  possibly 
been  translated  out  of  it — not  into  poetry. 

One  of  the  poems  in  the  same  volume  ap- 
proaching perfection  within  this  class  is  A  Land- 
scape  by  Courbet  : 

Low  lies  the  mere  beneath  the  moorside,  still 
And  glad  of  silence  :  down  the  wood  sweeps  clear 
To  the  utmost  verge  where  fed  with  many  a  rill 
Low  lies  the  mere. 

153 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

The  wind  speaks  only  summer :  eye  nor  ear 
Sees  aught  at  all  of  dark,  hears  aught  of  shrill, 
From  sound  or  shadow  felt  or  fancied  here. 

Strange,  as  we  praise  the  dead  man's  mi«rht  and  skill, 
Strange  that  harsh  thoughts  should  make  such  heavy  cheer, 
While,  clothed  with  peace  by  heaven's  most  gentle  will, 
Low  lies  the  mere. 

It  is  spoilt  by  the  irrelevant  "as  we  praise  the 
dead  man's  might  and  skill,"  which  introduces 
us  to  a  group  in  a  picture  gallery. 

Probably  the  finest  of  all  the  poems  where 
Swinburne  deals  with  a  quite  definite,  tangible, 
well-known  subject  is  the  Elegy  18G0-1891,  on 
the  death  of  Sir  Richard  Burton,  though  even 
here  some  must  pause  at  "  our  demigod  of 
daring,"  "  the  sovereign  seeker  of  the  world," 
and  at  other  phrases  that  might  seem  only 
exaggerations  of  rhetoric.  In  it  he  seems  to  be 
half-way  between  a  manly  fleshly  view  of  nature, 
of  "the  swordsman's  hand,  the  crested  head," 
and  a  spiritual  transfiguring  view.  Possibly  the 
name  "  Burton "  in  the  last  verse  is  no  gain. 
"  Auvergne,  Auvergne,"  however,  which  opens 
the  poem,  is  of  itself  sufficiently  unfamiliar,  per- 
haps— the  repetition  gives  it  a  sHghtly  extra- 
natural  value — and  onwards  from  the  first  verse : 

Auvergne,  Auvergne,  O  wild  and  woeful  land, 
O  glorious  land  and  gracious,  white  as  gleam 

The  stairs  of  heaven,  black  as  a  tlameless  brand. 

Strange  even  as  life,  and  stranger  than  a  dream.  .   .  . 

154 


LATER    POEMS 

there  is,  I  suppose,  scarcely  any  temptation  to 
think  of  Auvergne  apart  from  these  massy 
stanzas.  The  poem  is  in  every  way  a  charac- 
teristic one.  The  "glorious"  and  "gracious," 
indefinite,  complimentary,  and  excited  epithets, 
duplicating  sound  and  sense,  and  the  one  clear, 
small  comparison  to  a  "flameless  brand,"  and 
the  three  others  indefinitely  sublime  to  "the 
stairs  of  heaven,"  and  "life"  and  "a  dream," 
could  hardly  be  found  in  another  poet.  He 
begins  by  asking  whether  the  earth  would  not 
remember  this  man  if  it  could  remember  men  at 
all.  With  him  the  poet  had  seen  Auvergne, 
"  the  mountain  stairs  " 

More  bright  than  vision,  more  than  faith  subhme, 
Strange  as  the  light  and  darkness  of  the  world.  .  .  . 

strange  also,  as  he  goes  on  to  say,  as  night  and 
morning,  stars  and  sun.  Somewhat  rudely  and 
obscurely,  but  forcibly,  he  makes  a  comparison 
between  the  effect  of  death  on  Burton,  and 
dawn  on  the  mountain,  using  a  crude  line  of 
conventional  type  such  as  he  now  and  then  does 
affect : 

Whom  fate  forgets  not  nor  shall  fame  forget. 

There  follow  a  number  of  stanzas  where 
similar  comparisons  are  made  in  such  a  way 
that  the  spiritual  exalts  the  physical — an  abyss, 

155 


A.    C.    SWINHURNE 

"  viewless  even  as  time's,"  makes  him  '*  now 
dream  how  higli  the  freed  soul  elimbs "  after 
death — until  at  length  the  mountains  and  the 
river  are  strange  in  a  half  Dantesque,  half 
Ossianie  manner.  The  vague — "  past  and  mon- 
strous things  " — "  deadlier  things  unseen" — plays 
a  part.  Everything  is  violent  or  extreme.  In 
the  mist  the  two  men  are  blinded  as  a  pilot  with 
foam,  and  "  shrouded  as  a  corpse,"  and  they  go 
along  ledges  too  narrow  for  wild  goats  and  sit 
blinded  over  the  abyss.  The  mist  is  "raging." 
The  *'  grim  black  helpless  heights  "  "  scorn  "  the 
sun  and  "  mock  "  the  morning.  The  winds  had 
"  sins  for  wings."  The  river  below  suggests  the 
river,  soundless  and  viewless,  in  which  the  dead 
man  is  being  borne  according  to  some  super- 
stition which  the  poet  rejected  ;  and  he  turns  in 
thought  to  the  priests,  "  loud  in  lies,"  who  will 
mock  his  dust  with  their  religion.  But  the  soul 
of  the  man  is  free,  with  eyes  keener  than  the 
sun,  and  wings  wider  than  the  world.  His 
scorn,  too,  was  "  deep  and  strong  as  death  and 
life."  The  poet  asks  in  what  "illimitable,  in- 
superable, infinite"  space  the  soul  will  use  its 
wings.  He  answers  immediately  that  no  dream 
or  faith  can  tell  us.  But  having  said  that  this 
soul's  flight  had  always  been  sunward,  his  mind 
turns  to  Sophocles  and  the  garden  of  the  sun, 
and  the  tree  of  wisdom  growing  in  it  which  had 

156 


LATER    POEMS 

gone  to  make  the  sheaf  "his  strenuous  spirit 
bound  and  stored  aright."  Still  thinking  of  the 
sun  he  supposes  a  further  advance  of  the  soul 
"  toward  the  dawn  "  after  death — "  the  imperious 
soul's  indomitable  ascent."  "  But,"  he  says, 
meaning  perhaps  that  a  thin  "  soul "  is  not 
recognizable  as  Burton : 

But  not  the  soul  whose  labour  knew  not  end — 

But  not  the  swordsman's  hand,  the  crested  head.  .  .  . 

However  much  the  Elegy  tells  us  of  Burton, 
one  verse  at  least  pictures  the  mind  of  the  poet : 

We  sons  of  east  and  west,  ringed  round  with  dreams. 
Bound  fast  with  visions,  girt  about  with  fears, 

Live,  trust  and  think  by  chance,  while  shadow  seems 
Light,  and  the  wind  that  wrecks  a  hand  that  steers. 

This  is  the  man  to  whom  Burton's  path  through 
the  world  was  beset  with  dangers  that  "coiled 
and  curled  "  against  him,  who  saw  the  waves  of 
the  mountains  more  "fierce  and  fluctuant"  than 
the  seas,  and  the  steep-built  town  as  a  "fear- 
less "  town  hailing  and  braving  the  heights,  who 
felt  the  heights  brighter  than  vision,  sublimer 
than  faith,  strange  as  light,  darkness,  night, 
morning,  stars  and  sun. 

If  Swinburne  had  written  about  Auvergne  in 
prose,  and  apart  from  Burton,  his  description 
might  well  have  diiFered  from  that  of  other  men 
only  in  lucidity  and  vigour :  it  would  probably 

157 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

have  differed  a  great  deal  from  tliat  in  tlie  Elegy. 
Memory  and  thought  had  been  awakened  and 
exeited  by  Burton's  deatli,  and  the  ordinary 
values  of  things — the  tourist  value,  for  ex- 
ample— had  been  disturbed  or  destroyed.  His 
reeolleetions  of  the  mountains  ceased  to  be,  if 
they  ever  had  been,  more  or  less  large  dis- 
integrated fragments  of  the  earth  and  became 
a  region  of  the  spiritual  world,  mingling  with 
other  mountains  seen,  read  of,  or  imagined, 
coloured  and  changed  by  a  hundred  other 
images  assembled  at  the  passionate  thought  of 
death  and  of  the  past.  He  ceased  to  be  a  hard 
Victorian  atheist ;  he  was  unveiled  as  a  man 
who  through  his  ancestors  and  through  his  own 
thought  and  fancy  had  entertained  a  multitude 
of  the  forms  of  death.  Once  this  paroxysm 
of  emotional  thought  had  begun  to  enter  the 
form  of 

Auvergne,  Auvergne^  O  wild  and  woeful  land.  .  .  . 

the  incalculable  suggestions  of  rhythm  began  to 
enter  and  still  further  to  convert  the  humorous 
and  rational  atheist.  The  result  is,  I  believe, 
as  accurate  and  real  as  a  map  or  a  guide-book, 
and  that  in  spite  of  what,  to  another  view, 
might  seem  words  only,  begotten  of  words. 

Rhyme   certainly   acted  upon   Swinburne  as 
a  pill  to  purge   ordinary   responsibilities.     He 

158 


LATER    POEMS 

became  sensible  to  many  of  the  values  of  words, 
ancient  and  modern,  ordinary  and  figurative, 
etymological  and  melodic.  Thus  he  played 
with  the  literal  meaning  of  Gautier's  Christian 
name,  Theophile :  "  Dear  to  God,"  he  said,  and 
went  on  to  speak  of  the  God  that  gives  men 
*'  spirit  of  song."  Thus  he  played  with  the  name 
of  Cape  Wrath : 

But  north  of  the  headland  whose  name  is  Wrath,  by  the 
wrath  or  the  ruth  of  the  sea.  .  .  . 

Another  form  of  play  is  noticeable  in  : 

Enmeshed  intolerably  in  the  intolerant  net, 

and  still  more  in  : 

And  in  the  soul  within  the  sense  began 

The  manlike  passion  of  a  godlike  man, 

And  in  the  sense  within  the  soul  again 

Thoughts  that  made  men  of  gods  and  gods  of  men. 

This  may  turn  out  to  be  very  nearly  nonsense  ; 
but  certainly  it  fills  a  place  harmoniously  in 
Thalassms,  a  poem  which  is  not  nonsense.  The 
line  before  it  is  an  example  of  another  kind 
of  play  w4th  words.  Instead  of  saying  "the 
nightingale  "  he  says  "  the  singing  bird  whose 
song  calls  night  by  name " ;  a  thing  "  eight 
hundred  years  old  "  is  one  "  that  has  seen  de- 
cline eight  hundred  waxing  and  waning  years." 
Speaking  of  himself  and  others  who  read 
Tennyson  in  their  teens,  he  says  that  it  was 

159 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

"ere  time  in  the  rounding  rhyme  of  choral 
seasons  had  hailed  us  men,"  whicli  is  more  than 
mere  periphrasis.  The  next  line  but  one  con- 
tains an  example  of  a  kind  of  play  which  surprises 
us  by  making  perfect  sense : 

Life  more  bright  than  the  breathless  light  of  soundless  moon 
in  a  songless  glen. 

Its  perfect  sense  is,  I  think,  not  more  important 
than  its  pattern,  which  is  of  a  kind  that  seems 
instantly  to  forbid  examination  save  by  the 
ear.  Another  very  old  game  played  all  through 
Swinburne's  books  is  that  with  the  phrase 
"  spirit  of  sense."  In  one  example,  just  given, 
the  play  is  with  soul  and  sense :  sometimes  the 
two  are  a  line  apart,  sometimes  combined  as  by 
Shakespeare,  sometimes  in  the  form  of  "  spirit 
in  sense,"  sometimes  as  *'  spirit  and  sense." 
Mademoiselle  de  Maupin  was  "the  golden 
book  of  spirit  and  sense."  The  play  of  allitera- 
tion needs  no  example,  except  one  which  shows 
at  the  same  time  another  variety  of  "  spirit  of 
sense,"  and  how  the  long  line  was  yet  another  aid 
to  Swinburne's  redemption  from  responsibility  : 

And  now  that  the  rage  of  thy  rapture  is  satiate  with  revel  and 

ravin  and  spoil  of  the  snow, 
And  the  branches  it  brightened  are  broken,  and  shattered 

the  treetops  that  only  thy  wrath  could  lay  low^ 
How  should  not  thy  lovers  rejoice  in  thee,  leader  and  lord  of 

the  year  that  exults  to  be  born, 

160 


LATER    POEMS 

So  strong  in  thy  strength  and  so  glad  of  thy  gladness  whose 

laughter  puts  winter  and  sorrow  to  scorn  ? 
Thou  hast  shaken  the  snows  from  thy  wings,  and  the  frost 

on  thy  forehead  is  molten  ;  thy  lips  are  aglow 
As  a   lover's  that  kindle  with  kissing,  and  earth,  with  her 

raiment  and  tresses  yet  wasted  and  torn, 
Takes  breath  as  she  smiles  in  the  grasp  of  thy  passion  to  feel 

through  her  spirit  the  sense  of  thee  flow. 

Here  the  rhythm  should  subdue  curiosity  :  if  it 
does  not,  March:  An  Ode  will  fail,  since  there 
is  nothing  but  rhythm,  the  descriptions  and 
even  the  form  of  the  sentences  being  often 
imperfectly  harmonious  with  the  rhythm,  and 
no  serious  aspirant  will  be  satisfied  with  the 
amount  of  sense  in : 

For  the  breath  of  thy  lips  is  freedom,  and  freedom's  the 

sense  of  thy  spirit,  the  sound  of  thy  song. 
Glad  god  of  the  north-east  wind,  whose  heart  is  as  high  as 

the  hands  of  thy  kingdom  are  strong.  .  .  . 

It  is  important  to  notice  that  verse  permits 
the  poet  to  use  *'  the  hands  of  thy  kingdom " 
and  a  thousand  other  aids  to  length  and  opacity. 
Thus  in  Ex  Voto  he  thinks  of  his  "  last  hour  " 
— he  personifies  it  vaguely — and  how  she  will 
kiss  him. 

The  cold  last  kiss  and  fold 
Close  round  my  limbs  her  cold 
Soft  shade  as  raiment  rolled 
And  leave  them  lying. 

It  bears  analysis,  but,  except  to  lovers  of  the 

L  IGl 

i 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

rhj'mcs  and  this  stanza  form,  must  seem  long- 
winded.  Rhyme  and  the  stanza  excuse  him 
when  he  pictures  England  not  only  with  : 

The  sea-coast  round  her  Hke  a  mantle, 

but  with : 

The  sea-cloud  like  a  crown. 

This  would  be  a  grave  weakness  in  a  poet  who 
encouraged  reading  closely  with  eye  and  ear. 
In  the  next  stanza  of  the  same  poem,  The 
Commonweal,  the  rhyme  "  deathless  "  leads  him 
to  speak  of  "  the  breathless  bright  watchword  of 
the  sea."  This  is  extraordinarily  near  nonsense, 
almost  a  bull's-eye.  He  is  speaking  of  English- 
men bearing  "  in  heart "  this  watchword, 
"  breathless "  means  perhaps  silent  or  inner, 
and  "  bright "  is  complimentary :  but  it  is  a 
near  thing.  Swinburne  is  usually  privileged 
when  singing  of  the  sea,  for  it  can  mean  the 
wild  sea  water,  or  the  spirit  of  the  sea  which 
is  freedom,  or  the  mother  of  Venus.  There- 
fore, when  Swinburne  tells  us  that  England 
loves  light  for  the  sake  of  light,  and  truth  for 
the  sake  of  truth,  but  song  for  the  sake  of  the 
sea  as  well  as  of  song,  we  acknowledge  the  in- 
separableness  of  song  and  sea. 

Sometimes  the  god  of  rhyme  leads  him  to 
un-English  writing,  as  when  he  speaks  of  Sep- 
tember, the  month  of  the  proclamation  in  1870 

1G2 


LATER    POEMS 

of  the  French  Repiibhc,  as  "  Having  only  the 
name  of  honour,  only  sign  of  white."  Hardly 
more  Enghsh  are  some  of  the  Biblical  phrases, 
like  "  the  strengths  of  the  storm  of  them  "  ;  but 
they  provided  pairs  of  short  syllables  where  such 
were  wanted. 

Lengthiness  through  reduphcation  or  multi- 
plication needs  hardly  an  example,  except  per- 
haps in  the  class  of  comparisons.  In  the  two 
first  cases  one  comparison  is  seen  provoking 
another  in  almost  merry  mood : 

The  sea  was  not  lovelier  than  here  was  the  land,  nor  the  night 
than  the  day,  nor  the  day  than  the  night.  .  .  . 

So  again,  light  at  moonrise  is  lapped  in  gloom, 

Even  as  life  with  death,  and  fame  with  time,  and  memory 

with  the  tomb 
Where  a  dead  man  hath  for  vassals  Fame  the  serf  and  Time 

the  slave. 

In  this  third  case  comparisons  lead  out  of  com- 
parisons in  a  tangled  network  which  helps  to 
hide  from  some  readers  that  hzards  are  the 
subjects  of  all  the  hues  but  the  first : 

Flowers  dense  and  keen  as  midnight  stars  aflame 
And  living  things  of  light  like  flames  in  flower 
That  glance  and  flash  as  though  no  hand  might  tame 
Lightnings  whose  life  outshone  their  stormlit  hour 
And  played  and  laughed  on  earth,  with  all  their  power 
Gone,  and  with  all  their  joy  of  life  made  long 
And  harmless  as  the  lightning  life  of  song. 
Shine  sweet  like  stars  when  darkness  feels  them  strong. 
1G3 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

The  lizards  are  compared  to  lightninf^s,  which 
are  then  compared  to  song  ;  and  finally  Howers 
and  lizards  are  compared  to  stars  :  the  stanza  is 
thus  filled  with  words  of  light  and  movement. 
Sometimes  the  comparisons  overwhelm  the  sub- 
ject of  them,  that  is,  for  a  reader  disobedient 
to  the  command  of  sound  and  metre  and  the 
suggestiveness  which  they  ordain.  A71  Auhmin 
Vision,  for  example,  includes  a  storm  which  is 
thus  exalted  by  a  complexity  of  abstract  com- 
parisons which  is  almost  maddening  to  the 
soberly  inquiring  intelligence : 

As  the  darkness  of  thought  and  of  passion  is  touched  by  the 

light  that  gives 
Life  deathless  as  love  from  the  depth  of  a  spirit  that  sees 

and  lives. 
From  the  soul  of  a  seer  and  a  singer,  wherein  as  a  scroll  un- 
furled 
Lies  open  the  scripture  of  light  and  of  darkness,  the  word 

of  the  world, 
So,  shapeless  and  measureless,  lurid  as  anguish  and  haggard 

as  crime, 
Pale  as  the  front  of  oblivion  and  dark  as  the  heart  of  time. 
The  wild  wan  heaven  at  its  height  was  assailed,  and  subdued 

and  made 
More  ffiir  than  the  skies  that  know  not  of  storm  and  endure 

not  shade. 

Comparisons,  like  these,  which  either  combine 
or  confuse  the  physical  and  the  spiritual  world, 
are  numerous  and  intensely  characteristic  in 
Swinburne ;  he  would  not  be  anything  like  what 

164 


LATER    POEMS 

he  is  without  his  lands  "  loneUer  than  ruin,"  his 
seas  "stranger  than  death,"  his  land  of  "sand 
and  ruin  and  gold,"  his  friend's  laughter  that 
was  as  kind  "as  love  or  sleep." 

Akin  to  the  comparisons  are  the  lightly  made 
personifications  as  of  England,  of  the  "  last  hour  " 
in  Ex  f^oto,  of  defeat  and  ruin,  here  : 

Wherein  defeat  weds  ruin,  and  takes  for  bride-bed  France, 

and  of  hope  here  : 

And  hope  fell  sick  with  famine  for  the  food  of  change. 

How  ready  we  are  for  personification.  Poems 
and  Ballads  proved  by  the  poem  where  the 
Ballad  is  bidden  to  go  with  flowers  to  his  lady, 
who  shall  kiss  him  in  several  places : 

Ballad,  and  on  thy  mouth. 

There  the  personification  is  really  lost  in  embodi- 
ment :  the  ballad  becomes  a  boy.  As  a  rule 
there  is  no  embodiment  of  "  hope "  that  "  sets 
wide  the  door,"  nor  of  empire,  when  "  con- 
founded empire  cowers,"  and  so  on ;  and  we 
accept  it  as  indolently  as  perhaps  it  was  offered. 
It  is  part  of  the  roughness  of  Swinburne's  as 
of  other  styles  :  what  is  necessary  is  that  these 
elements  shall  be  absorbed  into  the  spiritual 
substance  of  words,  as,  for  example,  the  witch 

is  in  this  beautiful  verse  from  By  the  North 
Sea : 

165 


A.    C.    SWINIUIRNE 

Far  flickers  the  light  of  the  swallows, 

F"ar  flutters  the  weft  of  the  grass, 
Sj)un  dense  over  desolate  hollows 

More  j)ale  than  the  clouds  as  they  pass : 
Thick  woven  as  the  weft  of  a  witch  is 

Round  the  heart  of  a  thrall  that  has  sinned 
Where  youth  and  the  wrecks  of  its  riches 

Are  waifs  on  the  wind. 

There  the  grass  flutters  as  the  swallow  flickers, 
and  the  earth  becomes  light  and  hollow  under  us. 
Some  vagueness  and  some  cheapness  exist 
w^here  words  so  abound ;  where  three  words 
have  to  do  the  w^ork  of  one,  there  can  seldom 
be  any  fineness  of  single  words  or  short  phrases, 
and  at  times  the  sea  will  be  called  "  divine " 
and  "deathless,"  and  so  on,  and  things  will  be 
"  heavenly,"  "  strong  as  life,"  "  subhme  as  death," 
and  so  on.  But  more  noticeable  than  the 
vagueness  is  the  violence  and  extravagance. 
The  dawn  springs  like  a  panther  "  with  fierce 
and  fire-fledged  wings "  upon  the  lava-black 
land  of  Auvergne.  A  tiger  used  for  comparison 
in  Thalassius  is 

Drunk  with  trampling  of  the  murderous  must 
That  soaks  and  stains  the  tortuous  close-coiled  wood 
Made  monstrous  with  its  myriad-mustering  brood. 

This  is  like  the  dream  tiger  of  a  child  mad  with 
fear,  and  as  superhuman  as  Dolores  :  with  the 
panther  in  Imus  Veneris,  which  has  a  "hot, 
sweet    throat,"    it    might    almost    have    come 

166 


LATER    POEMS 

from  the  days  when  the  palm  tree  languished 
for  its  mate,  and  the  viper  and  the  lamprey 
most  strangely  loved.  The  child  in  JVialassius 
feels  the  thunder  and  the  lightning  as  atro- 
ciously as  he  dreamed  of  the  tiger — he  was 
"  half  distraught  with  strong  delight "  while  the 
heavens  were  "  alive  and  mad  with  glory  and 
angry  joy."  Of  a  quieter  but  equal  extremity 
is  the  phrase  "  inlaid  as  with  rose "  which  is 
used  of  a  beaker  "left  divine"  by  the  lips  of 
Dione  at  a  feast  on  Olympus,  and  the  state- 
ment that  the  sun  does  not  light  the  Channel 
Islands  like  Victor  Hugo's  fame,  or  that 
Tennyson  (who  died  with  Cymbeline  open 
beside  him)  was  led  from  earthward  to  sun- 
ward, "guided  by  Imogen,"  which  Swinburne 
cannot  have  believed.  So  Gautier's  tomb  was 
a  "golden  tomb,"  and  Bath  was  "like  a  queen 
enchanted  who  may  not  laugh  or  weep." 
These  things  remind  us  that  Swinburne  had 
not  only  a  splendid,  vivid,  exuberant  nature, 
but  a  spendthrift  and  reckless  one.  He  has 
defended  himself  in  an  interesting  manner  in  the 
Dedicatory  Epistle  of  his  collected  poems  to 
Mr.  Watts-Dunton : 

Not  to  you,  or  any  other  poet,  nor  indeed  to  the  very 
humblest  and  simplest  lover  of  poetry,  will  it  seem  in- 
congruous or  strange,  suggestive  of  imperfect  sympathy 
with  life  or  inspiration  from  nature,  that  the  very  words 

167 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

of  Sapplio  sliould  be  heard  and  reeogni/ed  in  the  notes  of 
the  nightingales,  the  glory  of  the  presence  of  dead  poets 
imagined  in  the  presence  of  the  glory  of  the  sky,  the 
lustre  of  their  advent  and  tlicir  passage  felt  visible  as  in 
vision  on  the  live  and  limiiid  floorwork  of  the  cloudless  and 
sunset-coloured  sea.  The  half-brained  creature  to  whom 
books  are  other  than  living  things  may  see  with  the  eye 
of  a  bat  and  draw  with  the  fingers  of  a  mole  his  dullard's 
distinction  between  books  and  life :  those  who  live  the 
fuller  life  of  a  higher  animal  than  he  know  that  books 
are  to  poets  as  much  part  of  that  life  as  pictures  are  to 
painters,  or  as  music  is  to  musicians,  dead  matter  though 
they  may  be  to  the  spiritually  stillborn  children  of  dirt 
and  dullness,  who  find  it  possible  and  natural  to  live  while 
dead  in  heart  and  brain.  Marlowe  and  Shakespeare, 
iEschylus  and  Sappho,  do  not  for  us  live  only  on  the 
dusty  shelves  of  libraries. 

It  is  excellently  said,  and  necessary  ;  but  perhaps 
S^\inburne  was  unaware  that  poets  and  their 
poetry  entered  more  directly  into  his  work  than 
into  other  poets',  that  Landor,  Hugo,  Milton, 
Shelley  and  Marlowe  took  a  place  in  it  which 
Virgil  did  not  in  Dante's  or  Tennyson's,  which 
Spenser  or  Chapman  did  not  in  Keats',  or  Shelley 
in  Browning's.  To  give  one  example,  he  quotes 
from  Landor :  "  We  are  what  suns  and  winds 
and  water  make  us,"  and  on  that  text  preaches 
the  sonnet  beginning : 

Sea,  wind,  and  sun,  with  light  and  sound  and  breath 
The  spirit  of  man  fulfilling — these  create 
That  joy  wherewith  man's  life  grown  passionate 
Gains  heart  to  hear,  and  sense  to  read  and  faith 
168 


LATER    POEMS 

To  know  the  secret  word  our  Mother  saith 

In  silence,  and  to  see,  though  doubt  wax  great, 

Death  as  the  shadow  cast  by  hfe  on  fate, 

Passing,  whose  shade  we  call  the  shadow  of  death.   .  .  . 

As  he  was  called  the  "  seamew  "  in  childhood, 
so  he  often  wrote  of  himself  as  one  with  more 
than  fondness,  and  of  the  sea  as  his  "  mother  " 
with  more  than  gravity.  It  was  an  old-fashioned 
name  for  the  relation,  but  it  meant  more  than 
the  name  meant  elsewhere  and  has  its  effect. 
So  also  with  the  sun  and  the  light,  whose  names 
are  repeated  with  strange  frequency  in  his  last 
book  of  poems.  The  Prologue  to  Dr.  Faustus 
is  full  of  light,  bright,  fire,  lightning;  on  the 
first  page  of  The  Afte7glow  of  Shakespeare, 
"  light "  occurs  three  times,  "  lighten  "  twice, 
"  sunlight "  once,  along  with  "  fire,"  "  shone," 
"shine,"  "bright,"  "brighter,"  "flame"  and 
"  lustrous  "  ;  the  last  words  of  the  book  are  : 

While  darkness  on  earth  is  unbroken, 
Light  lives  on  the  sea. 

and  the  last  in  Poems  and  Ballads  were : 

With  stars  and  sea  winds  in  her  raiment. 
Night  sinks  on  the  sea. 

That  light  and  that  sea  have  a  beauty  of  spiritual, 
and,  as  some  would  say,  symbolical,  significance. 
And  yet  when  Swinburne  was  writing  A 
Swimmers  Dream  the  rhyme  of  water  appears 
to  have  sent  him  off  to  Love,  who  was  "  the  sea's 

169 


A.    C.    SWIN15URNE 

own  daughter,"  It  is  one  of  his  most  beautiful 
poems,  and  to  liav^e  overcome  the  effect  of  that 
abrupt  change  in  tlie  third  hne  : 

Dawn  is  dim  in  the  dark  soft  water, 
Soft  and  passionate,  dark  and  sweet. 
Love's  own  self  was  the  deep  sea's  daughter.   .  .  . 

was  a  consummate  labour  of  suggestive  music. 
I  will  give  one  more  example  of  a  sacrifice  to 
rhyme,  where  Swinburne  translates  Words- 
worth's lines  : 

I've  heard  of  hearts  unkind  kind  deeds 
With  coldness  still  returning  ; 
Alas  !  the  gratitude  of  men 
Hath  oftener  left  me  mourning. 

into  this  verse : 

The  poet  high  and  hoary 

Of  meres  that  mountains  bind 

Felt  his  great  heart  more  often 

Yearn,  and  his  proud  strength  soften 

From  stern  to  tenderer  mood. 

At  thought  of  gratitude 

Shown  than  of  song  or  story 

He  heard  of  hearts  unkind. 

It  was  not  for  this  that  rhyme  and  metre  were 
evolved. 


170 


VIII 

LATER    POEMS:    RESULTS 

Such  a  lover  of  words  and  music  could  only 
spend  his  full  powers  on  poems  which  essentially 
exist  in  his  books  or  in  the  memories  of  his  lovers, 
and  nowhere  else,  having  no  important  connection 
with  anything  outside.  Sometimes,  as  in  the 
Elegy  on  Sir  Richard  Burton,  he  triumphed  with 
a  distinguishable  subject ;  but  his  best  work  is 
where  he  makes  no  overt  appeal  to  our  interest 
or  sympathy,  though  the  richer  we  are  in  the  love 
of  life  and  of  words  the  greater  will  be  our 
pleasure.  The  same  is  true  of  all  poets,  but  not 
in  this  degree.  For  it  may  be  said  of  most  poets 
that  they  love  men  and  Nature  more  than  words  ; 
of  Swinburne  that  he  loved  them  equally. 
Other  poets  tend  towards  a  grace  and  glory  of 
words  as  of  human  speech  perfected  and  made 
divine,  Swinburne  towards  a  musical  jargon  that 
includes  human  snatches,  but  is  not  and  never 
could  be  speech.  Yet  it  must  never  be  forgotten 
that  this  jargon  was  no  arbitrary  novel  language, 

171 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

no  mere  anarchic  tumult  of  words.  It  was  the 
medium  evolved  out  of  human  speech  and  liter- 
ature by  a  man  who  was  lovable  and  admirable 
to  many  of  his  finest  contemporaries  ;  that  it  was 
at  least  as  natural  as  any  other  medium  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  in  a  five-mile  walk  he  would 
think  out  a  poem  down  to  the  last  line  and 
syllable  without  touching  paper  and  then  join 
a  luncheon  party  and  be  companionable  and 
witty,  full  of  interest  in  the  newspapers  and 
topics  of  the  day.  In  these  witty  moods  he 
was  able  also  to  turn  round  and  look  upon  his 
own  jargon,  parodying  it  and  its  content  com- 
pletely, thus : 

Surely  no  spirit  or  sense  of  a  soul  that  was  soft  to  the  spirit 

and  soul  of  our  senses 
Sweetens  the  stress  of  suspiring  suspicion  that  sobs  in  the 

semblance  and  sound  of  a  sigh  ; 
Only  this  oracle  opens  Olympian,  in  mystical  moods  and 

triangular  tenses — 
"  Life  is  the  lust  of  a  lamp  for  the  light  that  is  dark  till  the 

dawn  of  the  day  when  we  die." 
Mild  is  the  mirk  and  monotonous  music  of  memory,  melodi- 
ously mute  as  it  may  be, 
While  the  hope  in  the  heart  of  the  hero  is  bruised  by  the 

breach  of  men's  rapiers,  resigned  to  the  rod  ; 
Made  meek  as  a  mother  whose  bosom-beats  bound  with  the 

bliss-bringing  bulk  of  a  balm-breathing  baby, 
As  they  grope  through  the  graveyard  of  creeds,  under  skies 

growing  green  at  a  groan  for  the  grimness  of  God, 
Blank  is  the  book   of  his  bounty  beholden  of  old,  and  its 

binding  is  blacker  than  bluer  : 
172 


LATER    POEMS:    RESULTS 

Out  of  blue  into  black  is  the  scheme  of  the  skies,  and  their 
dews  are  the  wine  of  the  bloodshed  of  things  ; 

Till  the  darkling  desire  of  delight  shall  be  free  as  a  fawn 
that  is  freed  from  the  fangs  that  pursue  her. 

Till  the  heart-beats  of  hell  shall  be  hushed  by  a  hymn  from 
the  hunt  that  has  harried  the  kennel  of  kings. 

He  parodied  himself,  Tennyson,  Browning, 
Whitman,  Patmore,  Owen  Meredith,  and  Ros- 
setti,  and  succeeded  in  being  funnier  than  them 
all.  It  is  greatly  to  be  lamented  that  he  never 
fulfilled  his  intention  of  writing  the  diary  of 
Mrs.  Samuel  Pepys,  kept  concurrently  with  her 
husband's. 

He  said  himself  of  his  own  work  in  the 
Dedication  to  Collected  Poems  that  his  medium 
or  material  had  "  more  in  common  with  a 
musician's  than  with  a  sculptor's."  Hence  we 
accept  from  him  combinations  far  more  astonish- 
ing under  analysis  than  those  which  Dr.  Johnson 
condemned  in  Lycidas.  We  accept  them,  for 
example,  in  the  Ave  At  que  Vale.  A  volume 
might  well  and  profitably  be  written  upon  this 
poem  which,  compared  to  Tennyson's  Ode  on 
the  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  or  even 
to  Adonais,  is  like  an  Elizabethan  "  Bestiary " 
compared  to  a  modern  "  Natural  History." 
How  simple  and  natural  in  comparison  are 
Baudelaire's  own  words  quoted  at  the  head  of 
the  poem,  about  the  poor  dead,  suffering  when 
the  October  winds  blow  melancholy  among  the 

173 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

tombs  and  feeling  the  ingratitude  of  living  men  I 
He  begins : 

Shall  I  si  row  on  thee  rose  or  rue  or  laurel, 
Hrother,  on  this  that  was  the  veil  of  tliee  ? 
Or  quiet  sea-Hower  moulded  by  the  sea, 

Or  simplest  growth  of  meadow-sweet  or  sorrel. 
Such  as  the  summer-sleepy  Dryads  weave, 
Waked  up  by  snow-soft  sudden  rains  at  eve  ? 

Or  wilt  thou  rather,  as  on  earth  before, 
Half-faded  fiery  blossoms,  pale  with  heat 
And  full  of  bitter  summer,  but  more  sweet 

To  thee  than  gleanings  of  a  northern  shore 
Trod  by  no  tropic  feet  ? 

It  is  the  simplest  of  the  eighteen  verses,  and, 
after  hesitating  over  those  beautiful  Dryads  in 
the  two  lines  nearest  to  magic  in  Swinburne, 
sets  the  tune  of  the  whole.  No  man,  I  suppose, 
can  be  "  all  ear "  to  a  poem ;  he  must  stray  a 
little  now  and  then  to  think,  apart  from  the 
tune.  If  it  were  possible  never  thus  to  stray  in 
reading  or  hearing,  Ave  Atque  Vale  would  seem 
a  perfect  poem.  Compounded  of  different 
elements  arising  from  regret  and  inquiry,  it 
makes  out  of  Nature  and  poetry,  fancy,  super- 
stition, mythology,  and  truth,  a  perfect  tune, 
rich,  sorrowful,  and  beautiful.  I  cannot  pretend 
to  explain  it.  But  I  know  that  the  sound  and 
the  sense  of  the  first  line  seem  to  prepare  for  it  all 
and  to  make  almost  impossible  a  false  curiosity ; 
the  "  sea-flower   moulded  by  the  sea "  lulls  a 

174 


LATER    POEMS:    RESULTS 

little  more,  so  does  the  rhyme  of  "  sorrel "  and 
"  laurel";  so,  far  more,  do  all  those  long-vowelled 
endings  of  thee,  sea,  weave,  eve,  heat,  sweet, 
feet,  before,  and  shore.  "  Half  faded  "  is  ever 
so  little  disturbing  if  I  allow  it  to  combine  too 
closely  with  the  blossoms  and  to  produce  actually 
half-faded  flowers  instead  of  fiery  ones  to  which 
are  added  the  idea  and  the  sound  of  fading  but 
not  the  fact.  In  the  second  verse  Baudelaire's 
"  flowers  of  evil "  lead  Swinburne  to  far  lands 
and  so  to  the  sea,  and  in  particular  to  the  sea 
round  "  Lesbian  promontories,"  and  to  the 
"  barren "  kiss  of  "  piteous "  wave  with  wave 
which  is  ignorant  what  "  Leucadian  grave " 
"  hides  too  deep  the  supreme  head  of  song " : 
the  sea,  like  Sappho's  kisses,  "  salt  and  sterile," 
carries  her  hither  and  thither  and  vexes  and 
works  her  wrong.  Here,  too,  I  do  not  too 
closely  combine  "  barren  "  and  "  kiss,"  "  piteous  " 
and  "wave,"  nor  ask  how  waves  could  know 
where  Sappho  was  lying,  nor  why  she  lies  "  too 
deep."  "  Salt "  and  "  sterile  "  enter  into  the 
music  to  the  extent  of  three  syllables  and,  in 
the  faintest  manner,  add  to  the  effect  of  the 
"  bitter "  in  the  first  stanza.  So,  later,  in  the 
phrase  "  effaced  unprofitable  eyes,"  "  unprofit- 
able "  belongs  to  the  whole  and  not  to  the  eyes 
in  particular :  it  is  a  faintly  pervasive  sound 
and     feeling,     like    "poisonous,"    "luxurious," 

175 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

"  tumultuous,"  "  sleepless,"  "  sombre,"  "  mysteri- 
ous," "  sunless,"  "  irrevocable,"  and  the  recurring 
"  strange  "  and  "  bitter  "  and  "  sin."  I  confess 
that  I  pause  when  Swinburne  speaks  of  laying 
on  the  tomb,  Orestes-like,  "  a  curl  of  severed 
hair."  Now  and  then  a  thought  will  rise  a  little 
too  far  above  the  surface,  as  when  the  dead  is 
once  "  a  little  dust,"  and  again  "  wind  and  air." 
But  having  reached  the  last  words — 

For  whom  all  winds  are  quiet  as  the  sun. 
All  waters  as  the  shore, 

I  feel  that  there  is  more  of  death  and  the  grave 
and  a  living  man  venturing  among  them  than  in 
any  other  poem  except : 

Full  fathom  five  thy  father  lies.  .  .  . 

and  in  some  of  the  ballads.  The  poem  is  not  a 
rational  meditation,  but  the  uncouth  experience 
of  death  clothed  in  the  strangest  variety  of  words 
and  ideas,  which  results  in  music  rather  than 
articulate  speech.  Perhaps  no  single  sentence 
in  the  poem  is  unintelligible  to  the  mind  any 
more  than  it  is  ungrammatical.  But  the  com- 
bination is  one  which  the  mind  cannot  judge, 
though  it  may  approve,  seeing  the  effect,  and 
say  that  it  is  beyond  her  expectation  or  under- 
standing. 

Side  by  side  with  this  may  be  taken  At  a 
MontJis  End,  in  the  same  book.     It  opens  with 

17C 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

an  interplay  of  sounds  and  words  which  might 
have  preluded  pure  enchantment : 

The  night  last  night  was  strange  and  shaken  : 
More  strange  the  change  of  you  and  me. 

Once  morCj  for  the  old  love's  love  forsaken. 
We  went  out  once  more  toward  the  sea. 

For  the  old  love's  love-sake  dead  and  buried, 
One  last  time,  one  more  and  no  more.  .  .  . 

But  it  develops  into  a  psychological  study  of 
two  lovers  in  something  like  Browning's  manner. 
The  man  is  Swinburne,  or  at  least  a  "  light  white 
sea-mew."  His  mistress  is  a  "  sleek  black  pan- 
theress,"  a  "queen  of  panthers"  whose  title  calls 
for  the  rhyme  of  "  anthers "  later  on,  and  the 
Browningesque  tone  which  the  rhyme  denotes 
refuses  to  mingle  with  Swinburne's  lyric  ardour, 
ruining  the  piece  as  a  study,  making  it  seem 
a  grotesquely  poetical  handling  of  fact.  Relics, 
the  solitary  belated  last  successor  of  Faustiiie 
and  Felise,  is  a  failure  of  the  same  kind :  it 
shows  us  an  experience  plus  an  attempt  to  use 
it  in  poetry.  The  other  failures  are  the  poems 
to  Barry  Cornwall,  where  rhyme  and  fancy  are 
thrown  as  decorations  over  simple  and  sensible 
thoughts.  But  the  successes  in  Swinburne's 
own  richest  style  are  many.  One  of  them,  "  A 
Vision  of  Spring  in  Winter,"  is  said  to  have 
been  half  composed  in  a  dream,  and  the  others 
have  a  similar  faithful  relation  to  something 
M  177 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

which  we  do  not  quite  reco^ize  as  reality. 
TJic  Year  of  the  Rose,  for  example,  is  full  of: 

A  music  beginning  of  loves 
In  the  light  that  the  roses  made^ 
Such  light  as  the  music  loves, 
Tlie  music  of  man  with  maid. 

The  Last  Oracle  tempts  by  its  sober  appearance 
to  a  more  careful  reading  than  it  ought  to  have 
if  it  is  to  succeed  in  making  a  grandeur  of  dark- 
ness out  of  which  emerges  the  cry : 

O  father  of  all  of  us,  Paian,  Apollo, 
Destroyer  and  healer,  hear. 

The  sestina  called  The  Complaint  of  Lisa,  and 
the  Choriambics,  are  two  poems  which  give  a 
perfect  content  to  the  form  of  sestina  and  chori- 
ambics.  The  Ballad  of  Francois  Villon  is  a 
perfect  ballad  almost  as  saturated  with  colour 
and  sense  and  humanity  as  Ave  At  que  Vale. 
Before  Sunset  is  a  melodious  arrangement  of 
words  so  sweet  as  to  be  almost  wordless  in 
effect.  At  Parting  fits  the  idea  "  For  a  day  or 
a  night  love  sang  to  us,  played  with  us "  to 
a  tune  lasting  for  three  v^erses  of  seven  lines. 
A  Forsaken  Garden  is  nearly  a  successful 
attempt  to  turn  the  reality  of  a  "  steep  square 
slope,"  fields  that  "  fall  southward,"  and  a 
"  dense  hard  passage,"  into  the  music  of  "  all 
are  at  one  now,  roses  and  lovers."  Four  Songs 
of  Four  Seasons  are  similar  attempts  and  less 

178 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

successful,  especially  in  the  short  lines  of  Winter 
in  Northumberland,  where  the  frequent  rhymes, 
often  of  a  coniic  sort,  cause  deafness  to  all  else. 
Swinburne  was  often  in  later  years  to  repeat 
this  quality,  a  kind  of  joyless  leaping  and  danc- 
ing of  lifeless  words,  often  a  masque  of  simple 
facts  or  conceits  in  fancy  dress.  Rarely  could 
he  repeat  anything  like  the  quality  of  Ave  Atque 
Vale.  His  translations  from  Villon  make  us 
wish  that  all  the  enthusiasm  for  Love  and  Sin 
of  the  sixties  had  left  him  a  substance  like 
Villon's. 

Erecthens  (1876),  being  after  the  same  model, 
might  have  restored  the  glory  of  Atalanta.  It 
may  be  a  better  play,  as  Swinburne  thought  it, 
but  the  style  is  too  far  gone  in  the  Biblical,  the 
classical  and  the  un-English,  too  rich  in  phrases 
like  "  tongueless  water-herds,"  "  this  holiness  of 
Athens,"  "nor  thine  ear  shall  now  my  tongue 
invoke  not,"  "  a  God  intolerable  to  seamen,"  and 
"  as  a  cloud  is  the  face  of  his  strength  " ;  not  to 
speak  of  the  tendency  marked  in  this  : 

Drew  seaward  as  with  one  wide  wail  of  waves, 

Resorbed  with  reluctation  ;  such  a  groan 

Rose  from  the  fluctuant  refluence  of  its  ranks.  .  .  . 

and  the  confirmed  trick  shown  in  this : 

The  whole  world's  crowning  city  crowned  with  thee 
As  the  sun's  eye  fulfils  and  crowns  with  sight 
The  circling  crown  of  heaven. 

179 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

The  blank  verse  is  gracious  everywhere  and 
subtly  varied,  yet  is  in  efFect  monotonous  be- 
cause it  is  uncontrolled  and  lacking  in  con- 
tinuous form  and  purpose.  Lacking  these  it 
cannot,  except  in  the  charge  of  some  rare  voice, 
hold  us  long  either  with  its  speed  and  mass  or 
with  the  fullness  of  vowels  in  lines  like  these : 

Hear  then  and  know  why  only  of  all  men  I 
That  bring  such  news  as  mine  is,  I  alone 
Must  wash  good  words  with  weeping ;  I  and  thou, 
Woman,  must  wail  to  hear  men  sing,  must  groan 
To  see  their  joy  who  love  us.  .  .  . 

It  is  possible  also  to  be  tired  of  hearing 
laments  over  the  fact  that  a  girl  is  to  die  a  maid. 
The  movement  of  the  chorus  is  always  lovely  or 
magnificent,  but  the  words  have  not  enough  of 
any  sensuous  quahty  save  sound  to  conceal  a 
thinness  of  substance,  a  formality  of  style.  On 
the  stage  it  would  have  majesty:  it  offers  per- 
haps the  greatest  possible  opportunity  for  the 
extending  of  a  perfect  voice. 

Studies  in  Song  contains  the  fine  endless  poem 
in  seven  movements,  called  Btj  the  North  Sea, 
dedicated  to  Walter  Theodore  Watts,  now 
Theodore  AVatts-Dunton,  with  whom  he  had 
just  gone  to  live  at  Putney.  On  examination 
this  proves  to  mention  many  things  which  have 
sensuous  properties,  earth  and  sea  and  men  and 
women,  but  though  written  after  the  poet  had 

180 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

become  very  deaf,  it  is  sensuously  powerful  only 
in  sound.  The  length  and  monotony  help  to 
conceal  what  Hes  below  the  sound  and  must,  to 
some  extent,  enrich  it :  refusing  to  give  way  to 
the  sound  we  may  notice  the  verse : 

For  the  heart  of  the  waters  is  cruel^ 
And  the  kisses  are  dire  of  their  lips^ 

And  their  waves  are  as  fire  is  to  fuel 
To  the  strength  of  the  sea-faring  shi})s, 

Though  the  sea's  eye  gleam  as  a  jewel 
To  the  sun's  eye  back  as  he  dips. 

Having  noticed  it  we  may  question  the  value  of 
the  comparison  in  lines  3  and  4  save  to  provide 
"  fuel,"  and  we  may  be  slow  in  perceiving  that 
the  waves  are  said  to  be  as  fire  "  though  "  now 
at  sunset  the  sea  is  waveless  and  reflects  as  one 
jewel.  We  may  notice,  too,  that  oft-repeated 
thought  that  the  border  Hne  "sundering  death 
from  life,  keeps  weariness  from  rest."  Yet  we 
may  read  the  poem  more  than  once  without 
seeing  Ulysses  in  it.  We  shall  not  gain  by  dis- 
covering him.     The  essence  of  the  poem  is  : 

A  land  that  is  lonelier  than  ruin ; 
A  sea  that  is  stranger  than  death. 

That  is  the  key.  At  the  end  the  sun — "our 
father,  the  God" — is  added  to  earth  and  sea, 
and  the  poet  appears  to  bow  down  to  it  and  to 
offer : 

181 


A.    C.    SWINIUJRNK 

My  dreams  to  the  wind  ever-living, 
My  song  to  the  sea. 

Sun  iind  sea  and  poet  make  Off  shore  another 
complete  and  satisfactory  poem  :  here,  too,  the 
sun  is  his  "  Father  God  "... 

But  tliou  art  the  God,  and  thy  kingdom  is  heaven  and  thy 
shrine  is  the  sea. 

The  forty  stanzas  are  in  praise  of  the  light  and 
the  sea.  Nothing  is  said  unworthy  of  them : 
nothing  remains  in  the  memory  of  the  forty 
stanzas  save  the  light  and  the  sea.  The  eight- 
hundred-line  Song  for  the  Centenary  of  Walter 
Savage  Landor  is  not  almighty  sound,  but  re- 
flection long  drawn  out  through  love  of  sound. 
Thus  the  sound  makes  the  reflection  tedious, 
and  the  reflection  interferes  with  the  sound,  and 
the  poem  is  a  monument  for  patience.  Evening 
on  the  Broads  is  another  versified  travel  sketch 
which  might  seem  more  but  for  the  intrusion  of 
the  fact :  "  Northward,  lonely  for  miles,  ere  ever 
a  village  begin,"  which  mars  the  music,  and  save 
in  music  it  is  not  strong  enough  to  endure  the 
intrusion,  yl  Parting  Song  (to  a  friend  leaving 
England  for  a  years  residence  in  Australia) 
reveals  very  clearly  that  Swinburne  could  imitate 
as  well  as  parody  himself,  and  that  he  could  and 
would  write  beautifully  on  a  broomstick.      The 

182 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

Em'perors  Progress  is  interesting  because  it 
shows  the  poet  condemning  Nero's  "  heavy  fair- 
faced  hateful  head,"  partly  no  doubt  because 
Nero  Was  an  Emperor,  partly  because  Swinburne 
had  turned  forty. 

Songs  of  the  Springtides,  three  long  medita- 
tive lyrics  and  a  longer  birthday  ode  to  Victor 
Hugo,  belonging  to  the  same  year  as  Studies  in 
Song,  is  one  of  the  best  of  Swinburne's  books, 
and  in  its  original  form  one  of  the  most  pleasant 
to  possess.  It  is  also  one  of  those  in  which  he 
himself  plays  a  conspicuous  part.  Thalasslus, 
the  first  poem,  appears  to  be  an  autobiographical 
poem  of  the  same  class  as  Shelley's  Epipsychidion, 
and  open  to  the  charge  brought  by  Swinburne 
against  that  poem,  of  containing  riddles  as  well 
as  mystery.  The  name  Thalassius  is  presumably 
a  variant  of  his  boyish  nickname  "  Sea-mew," 
and  in  the  dedication  to  Trelawny  he  compares 
his  book  seeking  favour  of  Shelley's  friend  to  a 
"  sea-mew  on  a  sea-king's  wrist  alighting."  The 
child  is  found  in  April,  the  poet's  birth-month,  on 
the  sea  shore.  By  an  old  warrior  poet,  a  man 
like  the  sages  in  Shelley's  Prince  Athanase  and 
Laon  and  Cythna,  he  is  taught  Liberty,  Love, 
Hate,  Hope,  Fear  ("  fear  to  be  worthless  the 
dear  love  of  the  wind  and  sea  that  bred  him 
fearless ") :  and  in  the  end  the  old  man  blesses 
him: 

183 


A.    C.    SW  INBUUNE 

Child  of  my  suiilij^'ht  and  Ihe  sea,  from  birtli 

A  fosterling  and  fui^ilivc  on  earth  ; 

Sleepless  of  soul  as  wind  or  wave  or  fire, 

A  man-child  with  an  ungrown  God's  desire ; 

Because  thou  hast  loved  nought  mortal  more  than  me, 

Thy  father,  and  thy  mother-hearted  sea  ; 

Because  thou  hast  given  thy  flower  and  fire  of  youth 

To  feed  men's  hearts  with  visions,  truer  than  truth ; 

Because  thou  hast  kept  in  those  world-wandering  eyes 

The  light  that  makes  one  music  of  the  skies; 

Because  thou  hast  heard  with  world-unwearied  ears 

The  music  that  puts  light  into  the  spheres  ; 

Have  therefore  in  thine  heart  and  in  thy  mouth 

The  sound  of  song  that  mingles  north  and  south. 

The  song  of  all  the  winds  that  sing  of  me, 

And  in  thy  soul  the  sense  of  all  the  sea. 

The  whole  poem  is  a  dimly  grandiose  and 
luxuriant  portrait-history  of  a  poet's  breeding. 
The  human  figure  in  it  is  not  often  more  dis- 
cernible than  a  figure  in  fire  or  cloud,  and  like 
such  is  easily  lost.  But  it  does  not  so  much  as 
Epipsychidion  suggest  questions  and  riddles, 
except  to  irrelevant  or  inessential  curiosity.  It 
should  be  read  first  of  all  Swinburne's  poems 
both  as  showing  his  j;onception  of  himself,  and, 
what  is  far  more  important,  how  inextricably 
mingled  with  nature  and  with  words,  how 
eiitangled  and  obscured  by  them,  he  really  is, 
and  how  they  modify  his  conception.  Analysis 
proves  the  frameworli  and  the  thought  very 
simple ;  but   the   grandiose   dimness   is  due  to 

184 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

no  mere  exaggeration  or  mist  of  words,  but  to  ^ 
a  genuine,  an  insuperable  sense  of  the  mystery 
of  simple  things,  and  also  a  dissatisfaction  with 
the  debased  simplicity  of  phrases  like  "  He 
loved  the  sea."  This  is  one  of  the  longest  of 
Swinburne's  entirely  successful  pieces  of  music. 
Like  Ave  Atque  Vale  it  is  in  a  so-called  iambic 
metre,  resembling  Lycidas  in  the  rhyming  and 
the  occasional  short  lines,  but  more  abundant 
both  in  rhymes  and  short  lines.  Its  success 
illustrates  the  fact  that  his  best  work  is  almost 
always  done  with  a  familiar  English  rhythm, 
though  very  often  with  much  added  variety  in 
rhyme-pattern  and  length  of  line.  The  warmth 
and  richness  of  colour  and  feehng  permitted 
by  these  rhymes  alone  strengthen  the  music 
incalculably. 

On  the  Cliffs,  the  next  poem  in  Songs  of  the 
Springtides,  is  another  example.  It  is  similar 
in  rhythm  and  rhyme.  Here,  again,  the  poet 
speaks  of  his  "winged  white  kinsfolk  of  the 
sea,"  and  says  "  we  sea-mews."  And  as  he  is 
half  a  bird,  so  the  nightingale,  whose  song 
threads  the  poem,  is  half  a  woman,  or  rather 
more  than  half.  He  identifies  Sappho  and  the 
nightingale,  and  addresses  them  separately  or 
together,  and  sometimes  as  a  "  soul  triune," 
"  woman  and  god  and  bird,"  throughout  the 
poem.     But  the  identification  is  misty,  perhaps 

185 


A.    C.    SWINHURNK 

arbitrary,  and  never  ceases  to  be  a  slight  im- 
pediment to  the  reader,  while  the  interspersed 
fragments  of  Sappho  are  both  unintelligible  in 
their  places  and  ineffectual.  Though  On  tlie 
Cliffs  would  gain  by  annotation,  it  does  not 
fail  to  make  a  powerful,  harmonious  impression 
by  means  of  a  musical,  passionate  use  of  time, 
sea,  night,  and  solitude,  the  poet,  the  poetess, 
and  the  bird,  and  a  tracery  of  words  more 
delicious  to  the  faculties  combined  in  reading 
than  to  the  pure  intelligence.  Like  Thalassius 
it  is  enriched  by  autobiography,  which  some- 
times asks  in  its  turn  to  be  illuminated  by 
intimate  personal  knowledge.  As  in  Thalassius, 
the  poet  is  dimly  glorified.  He  is  like  the 
nightingale : 

My  heart  has  been  in  thy  heart,  and  my  life 

As  thy  Hfe  is,  a  sleepless  hidden  thing, 

Full  of  the  thirst  and  hunger  of  winter  and  spring, 

That  seeks  its  food  not  in  such  love  or  strife 

As  fill  men's  hearts  with  passionate  hours  and  rest.   .    .  . 

P'or  all  my  days  as  all  thy  days  from  birth 

My  heart  as  thy  heart  was  in  me  or  thee. 

Fire  ;  and  not  all  the  fountains  of  the  sea 

Have  waves  enough  to  quench  it,  nor  on  earth 

Is  fuel  enough  to  feed. 

While  day  sows  night  and  night  sows  day  for  seed. 

Child  and  bird  have  been  "  as  brother  and 
sister"  since  first  her  Lesbian  word  flamed  on 
him.     The    *'  harmonious   madness "   which,   as 

18G 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

Shelley  foresaw  and  desired,  is  the  result  is  not 
birdlike  more  than  it  is  childlike  or  manUke. 
In  the  poet's  own  words,  "  light,  sound  and  hfe 
are  one"  in  it:  it  is  like  that  song  which  he 
heard  while  swimming,  with  the  sea-birds,  his 
"bright  born  brethren,"  skimming  overhead,  a 
song  of  "earth  and  heaven  and  sea"  molten 
together.  It  shifts  periods  and  attitudes  and 
moods,  and  combines  them  in  a  manner  that 
needs  a  book  of  words  if  ever  music  did. 

The  Garden  of  Cymodocc,  the  next  poem,  is 
in  the  same  metre,  but  varied  with  several 
different  lyric  verses.  It  begins  with  a  prayer 
to  the  sea,  to  be : 

A  spirit  of  sense  more  deep  of  deity^ 

A  light  of  love,  if  love  may  be^  more  strong 

In  me  than  very  song. 

The  first  half  makes  music  of  an  unnamed  wild 
island,  a  garden  that  has  snow-coloured  spray 
for  its  petals,  black  rocks  for  its  thorns.  The 
verse,  in  spite  of  references  to  visible  things, 
has  only  the  visual  effects  of  music.  It  does 
not  build  solidly,  clearly,  and  fixedly ;  its 
rhythm  and  rhyme  do  not  allow  it;  nor  is  it 
desirable  that  they  should.  Photography  has 
convinced  too  many  people  that  they  see 
what  the  camera  shows  them.  The  Garden  of 
Cymodoce  is  probably  at  least  as  near  as  a 
photograph  to  what  a  human  being  sees,  that 

187 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

is,  provided  the  liiiinan  being  has  not  seen  a 
photo<:;raph  beforeliand  and  known  what  to  look 
for.  But,  ahis !  \^ictor  Hugo  sets  foot  on  this 
fjiir  island  and  he  is  celebrated,  he  the  God  and 
Master  and  Lord,  and  Napoleon  III  is  abused, 

Whose  reeking  soul  made  rotten 
The  loathed  live  corpse  on  earth  once  misbegotten. 

Only  to  those  who  can  allow  Hugo  to  become 
a  mythic  figure,  vast  and  vague,  like  the  old 
warrior  poet  in  Thalassius,  will  the  whole 
poem  be  satisfactory.  Still  more  is  this  ability 
necessary  to  excuse  the  Birthday  Ode  Jo?'  the 
Annivei'sary  Festival  of  Victoi'  Hiigo^  Feb- 
ruary 26,  18S0.  Being  Hugo's  ever-ready  self- 
chosen  laureate  was  not  much  more  profitable 
to  poetry  than  being  Edward  the  Seventh's. 
These  birthday  odes  and  the  like  are  but 
poems  in  the  manner  of  Swinburne,  with  every- 
thing of  the  original  save  the  illusion,  the 
transfiguration,  the  absolute  and  imbroken 
sense  of  music.  It  is  a  pity  that  he  never  said 
of  this  imitator  as  of  the  others,  according  to 
H.  D.  Traill : 

They  strut  like  jays  in  my  lendings^ 
They  chatter  and  screech  :  I  sing. 

They  mimic  my  phrases  and  endings^ 
And  rum  Old  Testament  ring : 

But  the  lyrical  cry  isn't  in  itj 

And  the  high  gods  spot  in  a  minute 
That  it  isn't  the  genuine  thing. 

188 


LATER    rOEMS:     RESULTS 

In  the  year  of  this  Birthday  Ode,  1880, 
appeared  his  Heptalogia ;  or  the  Seven  against 
Sense,  with  its  parody  of  himself. 

The  Century  of  Ronndek  might  at  first  seem 
a  disappointing  failure  from  a  poet  who  so  loved 
metre.  But  in  fact  they  only  prove  how  much 
there  is  beyond  metre  in  his  best  work.  The 
roundels  are  in  fact  nothing  but  roundels.  The 
difference  between  them  and  his  best  work 
proves  that  they  were  written  in  a  spirit  of  gay 
if  loyal  experiment,  so  that  the  best  of  them 
are  the  Envoi,  bidding  them  "  Fly,  white  butter- 
flies, out  to  sea,"  and  the  roundel  on  the  roundel : 

A  roundel  is  wrought  as  a  ring  or  a  starbright  sphere 
With  craft  of  delight  and  with  cunning  of  sound  unwroughtj 
That  the  heart  of  the  hearer  may  smile  if  to  pleasure  his  ear 
A  roundel  is  wrought. 

Its  jewel  of  music  is  carven  of  all  or  of  aught — 

Love,  laughter,   or  mourning — remembrance  of  rapture  or 

fear — 
That  fancy  may  fashion  to  hang  in  the  ear  of  thought. 

As  a  bird's  quick  song  runs  round,  and  the  hearts  in  us  hear 
Pause  answer  to  pause,  and  again  the  same  strain  caught. 
So  moves  the  device  whence,  round  as  a  pearl  or  tear, 
A  roundel  is  wrought. 

With  a  public  that  suspects  delight  in  tech- 
nique for  its  own  sake,  the  roundels  tell  a  little 
against  Swinburne,  but  they  should  tell  still 
more  in  his  favour  because  they  make  it  so  clear 
that  in  that  mood  of  delight  he  was  one  half  a 

189 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

poet,  that  his  fire  was  not  one  to  be  kindled  at 
will,  that  the  echoing  and  cliiming  oi"  his  words 
could  not  be  equalled  by  mechanical  regularity 
of  recurrence.  Vet  some  of  the  roundels  are 
the  prettiest  saddest  things  alive ;  for  if  Swin- 
burne did  not  seek  all  in  writing  them,  he 
sacrificed  nothing  ;  and  he  was  justified  without 
referring  to  Hugo  when  he  said  in  the  Dedi- 
catory Epistle  to  Collected  Poeim  : 

A  writer  conscious  of  any  natural  command  over  the 
musical  resources  of  his  language  can  hardly  fail  to  take 
such  pleasure  in  the  enjoyment  of  this  gift  or  instinct  as 
the  greatest  writer  and  the  greatest  versifer  of  our  age 
must  have  felt  at  the  highest  possible  degree  when  com- 
posing a  musical  exercise  of  such  incomparable  scope  and 
fullness  as  "  Les  Ujinns." 

It  may  even  be  regretted  that  Swinburne  did 
not  always  use  this,  or  a  similarly  labelled  form, 
when  writing  occasional  or  complimentary 
verses.  Nearly  all  his  poems  to  or  about  chil- 
dren are  of  this  kind.  Many  stories  of  his 
devotion  to  children  are  told,  and  if  any  doubt 
of  his  love  remained  it  should  be  dispelled  by 
the  last  verse  of  "  A  Moss  Rose,"  where  he  says 
that  the  best  of  all  moss-roses  is  that  where  the 
flower  is  the  face  of  a  baby  and  the  moss  a 
bonnet  of  plush.  Few  of  his  children's  poems 
can  in  fairness  be  offered  except  to  other  adorers. 
They    abound    in    the   "  silly "    tones    perhaps 

190 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

inevitable  in  one-sided  affections.  They  are 
excessively  one-sided,  and  the  child  is  buried 
under  the  man's  indiscriminate  compliments.  If 
the  child  appears  he  is  delightful,  as  in  A  Child's 
Pity,  where  the  poet  tells  how,  after  a  piteous 
tale  was  read  of  a  mother  crocodile  that  was 
killed,  hours  after,  the  child — "  our  blithe  small 
lord  of  Paradise,"  Swinburne  calls  him — was 
heard  crying : 

He  was  so  sorry,  sitting  still  apart. 

For  the  poor  little  crocodiles,  he  said.  .  .  . 

Then  the  poet  goes  on  to  ask  "  what  heavenliest 
angels  of  what  heavenly  city  could  match  the 
heavenly  heart  in  children  here  "  ?  The  croco- 
diles are  delicious,  but  not  poetry,  any  more 
than  "  what  heavenliest  angels  .  .  ."  is  poetry. 

A  Midsummer  Holiday  was  remarkable  for  a 
series  of  sketches  after  nature  in  ballade  form. 
But  even  the  strict  bounds  of  the  ballade  did 
not  give  these  sketches  the  unity  and  complete- 
ness, the  independent  life  necessary  to  poetry. 
The  form  itself  was  wonderfully  varied,  and  pro- 
moted to  a  new  rank  of  scope  and  power :  the 
landscape  was  very  often  gracious  and  some- 
times perfectly  felicitous  as  in  the  description 
of  a  wasting  coast  where  earth  is  "  a  fruit  rain- 
rotted  to  the  core."  But  the  form  could  not 
make  poetry  of  these  incidents,  which  in  their 
turn  were  on  such  a  scale  and  of  such  a  nature 

191 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

as  rather  to  strain  the  form.  Most  of  the  other 
poems  in  this  vohime  grew  out  of  actual  scenes 
and  actual  events,  like  many  great  poems,  but 
are  interesting  perhaps  only  to  readers  with 
a  particular  knowledge  of  these  scenes  and 
events. 

The  third  series  of  Poems  and  BaUads  gave 
an  unsurpassable  exhibition  of  metrical  experi- 
ments.    They  can  only  be  judged  when  rendered 
by   an    excellent  voice.      "  The   Armada,"   for 
example,  needs   a  "  God-gifted  organ  voice  of 
England "  to   recite  it :  without   such  a  voice, 
the   mere   creeping    intelligence    intrudes    and 
interrupts,  making  a  fatal  pause  in  the  tempes- 
tuous tide  of  it.     Read  silently  alone  it  loses  the 
effect  of  combining  and   accumulating  sound : 
at  most,  the  words  only  give  occasional  transitory 
impulses  to  the  spirit.     In  Swinburne's  poetry 
the  large  groups  of  sounds  and  meanings  are 
what  count,  and  except  in  a  short  poem  the  eye 
and  the  mind  cannot  do  these  justice.     Ear  and 
mind  are  necessary.     Possibly  even  March:  An 
Ode  would  seem  to  have  merit  if  declaimed  as 
well  as  possible.     Without   that  advantage  A 
Word  xdth  the  1Fi?id  is  recognisable  as  a  charac- 
teristic piece  of  Swinburne,  each  of  the  roundels 
of  Retvrn  fills  the  mind  like  a  bell  stroke,  and 
the  Ballad  of  Bath  is  a  stately  flattery,  but  only 
the  dialect  poems  and  the  lines  For  Seamen  can 

192 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

give  up  all  that  they  have  to  give.  To  a  Sca- 
Mew  is  different ;  it  is  in  any  case  a  spotless 
ecstasy  in  rhyme,  but  is  doubled  in  value  by  its 
connection  w^ith  Swinburne  and  the  sea-mew  at 
Beachy  Head  in  September,  1886  : 

Ah^  well  were  I  for  ever 

Would'st  thou  change  lives  with  me. 

The  poems  in  folk-ballad  style  are  among  the 
happiest  of  Swinburne's  experiments  in  language 
and  dialects  other  than  his  own.  When  he  re- 
viewed Rossetti's  poems  he  praised  Stratton 
Water  but  complained  that  "it  is  so  far  a  copy 
that  it  seems  hardly  well  to  have  gone  so  far  and 
no  further."  Swinburne  compromised  by  giving 
his  phrases  and  his  rhythms  a  sharper  finish 
than  is  usual  in  the  genuine  ballads ;  otherwise 
he  added  nothing  to  place  them  among  his  best 
original  work.     The  Winds  is  a  perfect  thing : 

O  weary  fa'  the  east  wind. 

And  weary  fa'  the  west  : 
And  gin  I  were  under  the  wan  waves  wide 

I  wot  weel  wad  I  rest. 

O  weary  fa'  the  north  wind. 

And  weary  fa'  the  south  : 
The  sea  went  ower  my  good  lord's  head 

Or  ever  he  kissed  my  mouth. 

Weary  fa'  the  windward  rocks. 

And  weary  fa'  the  lee  : 
They  might  hae  sunken  sevenscore  ships. 

And  let  my  love's  gang  free. 
N  193 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

And  weary  fa'  ye,  mariners  a', 

And  weary  fa'  tlie  sea  : 
It  might  liae  taken  an  hundred  men. 

And  let  my  ae  love  he. 

In  poems  like  The  Bdlhiil  of  Dead  Mens  Bay, 
the  ballad  has  merely  modified  Swinburne's 
customary  style  and  produced  an  attractive 
form  of  simplicity.  But  Kingsley  did  at  least 
as  well  in  Airly  Beacon.  For  dialect  and  for 
substance  Tennyson's  Northern  Farmer  is 
superior,  because  it  enlarged  the  poet's  range, 
while  Swinburne's  was  actually  narrowed. 

Asti'opliel  contained  more  of  these  experi- 
ments and  perhaps  an  equal  metrical  variety. 
Some  of  this,  as  before,  is  of  a  kind  that  is 
three  parts  wasted  if  read  in  silence.  Its  sound 
is  its  chief  sensuous  element :  read  in  silence 
the  abstract  nature  of  Swinburne's  vocabulary 
is  painfully  apparent,  and  lines  like : 

Faith,  a  splendour  that  hope  makes  tender,  and  truth,  whose 
presage  the  soul  divines — 

call  for  the  fundamental  brainwork  that  brings 
to  the  verse  nothing  but  calamity.  Loud  or 
silent,  pieces  hke  Grace  Darling  can  hardly  es- 
stablish  a  claim  to  be  more  than  commonplace 
thought  decorated  by  enthusiasm  in  fancy  dress. 
But  the  Elcgjj  on  Burton — not  the  lines  On  the 
Deat/i  of  Richard  Burfon — is  one  of  his  master- 
pieces of  richly  imaged  emotion,  the  Threnody 

19 1 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

on  P.  B.  JMarston,  one  of  his  masterpieces  of 
abstract  contemplation  made  sensuous  only  by 
rhythm.  A  Sivimmer\H  Dream  can  be  seen  even 
by  the  eye  to  be  the  finest  of  Swinburne's 
praises  of  swimming : 

A  purer  passion,  a  lordlier  leisure, 

A  peace  more  happy  than  lives  on  land. 
Fulfils  with  pulse  of  diviner  pleasure 

The  dreaming  head  and  the  steering  hand. 
I  lean  my  cheek  to  the  cold  grey  pillow. 
The  deep  soft  swell  of  the  full  bi'oad  billow. 
And  close  mine  eyes  for  delight  past  measure. 

And  wish  the  wheel  of  the  world  would  stand.   .  .  . 

The  ear  makes  it  what  the  eye  cannot  make  it — 
a  dream  in  music  ;  not  the  music  of  sweet  words 
in  which  Swinburne  is  often  deficient,  but  of 
rhythms  and  great  images  in  harmony  with 
them.  A  Nympholcpt  is  yet  finer,  but  being 
longer  suffers  more  from  the  mute  and  curious 
eye,  for  it  allows  the  mind  to  resent  the  emphasis 
and  the  words  which  seem  periphrastic  rather 
than  expressive.  But  in  fact  this  poem,  almost 
as  long  as  if  it  were  in  praise  of  Hugo  and  not 
of  Pan,  has,  diffused  but  unbroken  throughout 
it,  the  magic  unexpectedly  revealed  in  those  two 
lines  of  Ave  Atque  Vale\ 

Such  as  the  summer-sleepy  dryads  weave. 
Waked  up  by  snow-soft  sudden  rains  at  eve. 

All  the  description,  the  reflection,  the  magnifica- 

195 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

tion,  do  not  obscure  tliis  magic,  but  orchestrate 
it  for  the  reader  who  lias  ears  to  hear  and  some- 
one else  to  fill  them  with 

Thine  immanent  presence,  the  pulse  of  thy  heart's  hfe.  Pan. 

Then  he  will  not  inquire  why  the  wave  should 
"  reek  "  of  the  lioht  that  flickers  or  of  the  spray 
that  flies,  but  will  su})mit  himself  to  the  spirit 
of  the  hour — and  of  the  poet — that  subdues  all 
to  Pan : 

And  nought  is  all,  as  am  T,  but  a  dream  of  thee. 

Keats  could  have  put  as  much  magic  into  one 
line ;  but  then  he  wrote  no  long  poem  which 
sustains  that  magic  until  it  possesses  and  enslaves 
the  reader.  He  does  no  more  than  put  an  in- 
cantation into  our  lips  which  we  use  each  accord- 
ing to  his  capacity.  Swinburne's  poem  has  no 
voice  as  of  La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci,  but  a 
blare  and  blaze  of  music  which  is  tyrannous, 
and  allows  a  choice  only  between  absolute 
submission  and  rejection.  It  is  impossible  to 
enjoy  A  Nymplwlcpt  without  this  absolute 
submission — impossible  to  slip  quietly  into 
this  brassy  fairyland  and  out  again.  The  effect 
lasts  while  the  sound  reverberates  in  the  ears ; 
for  a  time  the  mind  is  mazed,  not  altogether 
at  ease.  With  the  restoration  of  silence 
the  experience  seems  unreal,  a  little  theatrical, 
not  wholly  pleasant,  and  it  cannot  be  recovered 

19G 


LATER    POEMS;     RESULTS 

without  a  repetition  of  the  performance ;  nor 
will  this  invariably  succeed ;  and  if  it  does 
not  succeed  it  will  disgust.  There  is  no  such 
power  in  Astropkel  where  the  metre  is  several 
times,  or  in  An  Autuvm  Vision,  where  it  is 
seven  times,  changed,  nor  in  On  the  South  Coast, 
where  the  same  verse  is  used  throughout,  as  in 
A  Nympholept  itself. 

As  Swinburne  came  more  frequently  to  attach 
his  poems  openly  to  definite  persons,  places  and 
events,  he  wrote  many  memorial  poems  for  lost 
friends,  and  it  is  worth  noticing  that  he  allowed 
himself  much  latitude  of  conjecture  or  assump- 
tion about  death,  and  in  exalting  that  unbodied 
monster  consents  to  blaspheme  earthly  "  life  that 
is  fettered  in  bonds  of  time  and  clasped  with 
darkness  about  as  is  earth  with  sea."  Instead  of 
saying  that  Landor  died,  Swinburne  used  the 
phrase :  "  went  to  find  his  equals  and  rejoin  his 
kin  among  the  Grecian  shades  where  Orpheus 
and  where  Homer  are."  This  alone  does  not 
prove  Swinburne's  belief  in  the  immortality  of 
the  soul  any  more  than  "  God  damn  "  proves  a 
belief  in  God  and  Hell.  But  the  phrase  is  not 
the  only  one  superficially  incompatible  with 
Swinburne's  statement  that,  like  Landor  himself, 
he  thought  the  immortality  of  the  soul  an 
"  utterly  incognisable  "  matter  "  on  which  it  is 
equally  unreasonable  to  have,  or  wish  to  have,  an 

197 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

opinion."  Nor,  perhaps,  is  it  incompatible  with 
his  retort — to  one  who  rebuked  him  for  bhis- 
plieniy  with  the  words,  "  You'll  die  like  a  dog, 
sir  !  " — "  Oh,  say  a  cat !  "  for  nine  lives  might  well 
have  seemed  to  such  a  lover  of  life  equivalent  to 
immortality,  whether  "where  Orpheus  and  where 
Homer  are,"  or  elsewhere. 

It  may  fairly  be  urged  that  Swinburne's  phrase 
about  Landor  was  used  ceremoniously  of  one  who 
stood  to  him  in  place  of  a  god.  To  strip  some 
poets  of  all  such  ceremonious  traditional  phrases 
would  leave  them  in  rags,  if  not  insufficiently 
covered  for  decency.  But  the  words  of  poets 
cannot  ofF-hand  be  accused  as  traditional  and 
condemned  as  meaningless.  No  one  would  treat 
in  this  way,  for  example,  the  lines  of  Shelley : 

I  am  borne  darkly,  fearfully,  afar  ; 

Whilst  burning  through  the  inmost  veil  of  Heaven, 

The  soul  of  Adonais  like  a  star, 

Beacons  from  the  abode  where  the  Eternal  are. 

Here  the  traditional  "  soul  "  and  "  abode  where 
the  Eternal  are  "  commands  more  attention  than 
Swinburne's  posthumous  abode  of  Orpheus, 
Homer  and  Landor.  We  feel  that  Shelley  was 
not  using  these  grand  vague  words  only  because 
grand  vague  words  are  impressive :  nor  perhaps 
was  Swinburne  when  he  described  the  swimmer's 
rapture,  "  the  love  of  his  body  and  soul  for  the 

198 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

darkling  delight  of  the  soundless  lake,"  and 
exclaimed : 

Might  life  be  as  this  and  death  be  as  life  that  casts  off  time 

as  a  robe. 
The  hkeness  of  infinite  heaven  were  a  symbol  revealed  of  the 

lake  of  Gaube. 

This  image  sent  him  off  thinking  about  "the 
spirit  that  is  not  breath,"  only  to  find  that  "  deep 
silence  answers,"  and  to  conclude : 

But  well  shall  it  be  with  us  ever 

Who  drive  through  the  darkness  here^ 

If  the  soul  that  we  live  by  never. 
For  aught  that  a  lie  saith,  fear. 

The  "lie"  must  be  the  lie  of  the  priests  about 
life  after  death. 

Swinburne  was  fond  of  the  variation  of  that 
"  lie  "  which  I  began  by  quoting.  He  spoke  of 
the  inexhaustible  labour  of  Victor  Hugo's  spirit 
ceasing  "among  us  at  least,  for  ever,"  and  of 
that  poet  joining  "the  company  of  his  equals." 
Sometimes  he  chose  a  different  expression, 
quoting,  for  example,  when  he  spoke  of  Byron's 
death :  "  He  was  a  great  man,  good  at  many 
things,  and  now  he  has  attained  this  also,  to  be  at 
rest."  But  again  and  again  he  preferred  to  think 
of  a  sensible  existence  in  some  sort  of  Elysian 
fields  rather  than  of  horizontal  peace.  "  If,"  he 
said,  "  as  some  thinkers  or  dreamers  might  ven- 
ture to  hope,  those  two  great  poets  of  the  grave, 

199 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

John  \Vebster  and  Victor  Hugo,  have  now  met  in 
a  world  beyond  the  grave  ..."  In  his  poetry  he 
ventured  to  indulge  this  hope  time  after  time. 
He  spoke  of  "  shades  of  dead  lords  of  music  " ; 
of  Tennyson  joining  Shakespeare,  of  Trelawny 
— "  surely  " — rejoining  Shelley,  "  if,"  that  is, 
"  hearts  of  the  dead  may  hear  "  ;  of  Barry  Corn- 
wall, on  October  4,  1874,  entering  the  garden  of 
death,  "  where  the  singers  whose  names  are 
deathless  one  with  another  make  music  unknown 
of  men  "  ;  of  P.  B.  Marston  after  death  "  haply  " 
meeting  Milton,  who  also  was  bhnd  ;  of  Aurelio 
Saffi  being  received  by  "  the  wider  world  of  men 
that  is  not  ours,"  and  standing  "in  Dante's 
presence, by  INIazzini's  side":  he  bade  Shakespeare, 
on  June  27,  1901,  "be  glad  in  heaven  above  all 
souls  ensphered"  and  "rejoice  that  still  thy 
Stratford  bears  thy  sign." 

On  the  other  hand,  saluting  Baudelaire,  he 
asked  the  dead  if  it  were  well,  and  were  there 
flowers  or  fruit  where  he  was,  but  concluded  by 
bidding  him  be  content : 

For  whom  all  winds  are  quiet  as  the  sun. 
All  water  as  the  shore. 

So  also  James  Lorimer  Graham,  when  he  died, 
"  went  to  the  dark  where  all  is  done."  This  is  not 
less  impressive  than  the  idea  of  an  Elysian  re- 
union.    Consequently  it  is  not  surprising  that 

200 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

the  poet  should  sometimes  combine  the  two,  as 
in  the  lines  hi  31emory  of  Barry  Cornwall,  where 
he  spoke  of  the  "  soft  long  sleep  "  on  the  "  broad 
sweet  bosom  of  death  "  as  well  as  of  "  the  world 
of  the  dead  men,"  rationalizing  his  belief  or  fancy 
by  the  reflection  that  the  living  may  keep  alive 
the  powers  of  the  dead.  He  liked  to  think  of 
the  departed  reaching  a  "  painless  place."  Once 
at  least  he  admitted  the  love  that  desired  to 
have  the  dead  friend,  P.  B.  Marston,  alive,  yet 
did  not  really  desire  it : 

Would  not  love  him  so  worse  than  ill. 
Would  not  clothe  him  again  with  care ; 

Death  had  given  him  "at  last  good  day,"  pain 
had  "fallen  on  rest";  his  friends  knew  that  "the 
worst  was  his  on  earth  " ;  nevertheless  in  this  set 
of  poems  also  he  could  not  refrain  from  the 
fancy  that  "  haply  "  the  dead  looked  down  from 
"  afar  above." 

The  words  "if"  and  "haply"  play  a  part  in 
scores  of  passages  concerning  the  dead  and  what 
happens  to  them.  Once,  in  the  dedication  of 
Astrophel  to  William  Morris,  he  spoke  with  con- 
fidence of  learning  when  we  die,  "  if  death  be  or 
life  be  a  lie  " ;  which  presumably  means,  whether 
death  be  an  end  or  not ;  and  he  assumed  that 
Sir  Richard  Burton,  being  dead,  had  "sought 
what  world  the  light  of  death  may  show."  He 
himself  was  still  uncertain  "if  aught   beyond 

201 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

sweet  sleep  lie  hidden,  and  sleep  be  sealed  not 
fast  on  dead  men's  sight  for  ever,"  though  he 
beheved  that  the  dead  knew.  Once  he  asked 
Death  to  let  the  dead  send  word  "  that  if  they 
wake  their  life  is  sweet  as  sleep  " ;  immediately 
afterwards  he  expressed  the  belief  that  death 
could  not  give  this  grace.  He  said  to  the  dead, 
"  if  ought  thou  knowest  where  now  thou  art," 
or  "  yet  haply  may  not — and  haply  may — no 
sense  abide  of  the  dead  sun's  ray,"  or  (in  ad- 
dressing a  believer,  Christina  Rossetti)  "If  death 
do  its  trust  no  wrong."  He  repeated,  "  if  the 
dead  be  alive,"  or  "  if  ever  a  voice  may  be  the 
same  in  heaven,"  or  "  if  hfe  there  be  that  flies 
not " ;  and  in  the  dedication  of  A  Channel 
Passage  to  the  memory  of  William  Morris  and 
Burne-.Tones,  he  said,  "  if  love  do  not  utterly 
die,"  but  confessed  that  of  their  sleep  : 

We  know  not  indeed  if  it  be  not 
What  no  man  hath  known  if  it  be, 

Life  quickened  with  light  that  we  see  not 
If  spirits  may  see. 

When  his  father  died  in  1877  he  had  said  simply 
that  he  "  knew  not  "  if  the  dead  one's  life  and 
spirit  and  work  "  here  are  done." 

Sometimes  while  saying  that  "peace,  rest, 
and  sleep  are  all  we  know  of  death,"  he  would 
add  that  "  surely  "  the  last  sleep  could  not  seal 
up  for  ever  the  "  keen  swift  hght "  of  the  eyes, 

202 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

or  that  "  perchance  "  some  "  lovelier  life  "  was 
theirs.  Once  at  least,  in  thinking  of  a  dead 
man,  he  speaks  of  the  "  roses,"  "  music,"  and 
"  angels  "  round  the  "  shrine  "  of  death,  and 
hears  Death  answer: 

Night  has  given  what  day 

Denied  him  :  darkness  hath  unsealed  his  eyes. 

At  other  times  he  speaks  of  death  lying  dead, 
and  takes  refuge  in  phrases  which  seem  to  be 
derived  from  the  words  of  Webster : 

We  cease  to  grieve,  cease  to  be  fortune's  slaves, 
Nay,  cease  to  die  by  dying. 

The  death  of  Sir  Richard  Burton,  for  example, 
makes  him  speak  of  death  delivering  "  from  life 
that  dies."  Browning,  by  his  death,  "  awakened 
out  of  life  wherein  we  sleep."  Theodore  de 
Banville's  hfe  "dies  and  casts  off  death."  P.  B. 
Marston  is  "  healed  of  life,"  no  longer  "  suffers 
life  "  ;  Death  for  him  is  the  "  healer  of  life  "  and 
"  sets  the  soul  that  love  could  set  not  free." 
Writing  in  memory  of  Aurelio  Saffi,  he  speaks 
of  "  the  deathless  life  of  death  which  earth  calls 
heaven."  But  of  WiUiam  Bell  Scott's  death  he 
can  only  say  that  "Haply  .  .  .  not  life  but 
death  may  indeed  be  dead." 

In  one  class  of  poems  he  casts  off  doubt. 
His  love  of  children  led  him  to  pay  them  the 
tribute  of  feigning  certainty.     To  a  "  baby  kins- 

203 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

woman "  lie  spoke  of  her  dead  mother's  eyes 
watching  lier  "  from  Paradise,"  and  imagines 
lier  '*  perchance "  seeing  them  sliine  on  lier, 
though  he  afterwards  confesses  that  lie  can 
'*  but  deem  or  dream  or  guess  thee  not  wholly 
motherless."  One  child,  Olivia  Madox  Frances 
Rossetti,was"  new-born  "on  earth  just  after  Oliver 
Madox  Brown  was  new-born  in  heaven.  A  Babijs 
Epitaph  is  spoken  by  the  baby,  whom  "  angels ' 
have  called  "  homeward,"  forbidding  her  "  here 
to  rest  beguiled."  Another  Babijs  Death  caused 
him  to  speak  of  the  "  little  soul  "  taking  wing 
''  with  heaven  again  for  goal " ;  but  in  a  third 
poem  he  could  only  say  that  "perchance,  though 
love  knows  naught,"  "guiding  angels"  had  caught 
the  little  hands  ;  in  a  sixth  he  said  that  "  heaven  " 
had  "  yearned  "  for  the  child  "  till  angels  hailed 
him  there  angel  by  name."  When  one  of  twins 
has  died,  he  speaks  of  light  breaking  "  haply  .  .  . 
into  newborn  spirit,"  which  is  obscure.  Even  a 
living  child  he  flatters  with  talk  of  angels ;  say- 
ing that  a  baby's  feet  might  tempt  an  angel's  lips 
to  kiss  them :  to  one  he  speaks  of  the  angels  as 
"  your  brothers  "  ;  to  another  he  cries :  "  O  child, 
what  news  from  heaven  ? "  One  child  makes 
him  a  believer  to  the  point  of  exclaiming : 

If  of  such  l)e  the  kiiiirdom  of  heaven, 
It  must  be  heaven  indeed. 


204 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

and  affirming  that  "  we  see  the  children  above 
us  as  they  might  angels  above." 

Writing  of  Blake's  Auguries  of  Innocence,  he 
calls  it  a  series  of  "  such  divine  epigrams  as 
angels  might  be  imagined  to  dictate,  by  way  of 
a  lesson  for  repetition  to  little  children."  This 
is  a  charming  fancy,  and  confessed  as  such. 
Whether  the  fancies  quoted  from  his  poems  on 
children  are  as  charming  may  be  a  matter  of 
opinion.  Expressed  as  many  of  them  are  in  the 
form  of  roundels  question  may  be  heavy-handed, 
but  to  me  at  least  they  seem,  even  so,  in- 
sufficiently convinced,  and  not  to  be  so  readily 
excusable  as  those  which  sorrow  prompts  and 
the  "  monumentalist "  more  or  less  immortalizes 
in  country  churchyards.  I  would  not  have  a 
poet  disdain  mythology,  but  if  he  shall  handle 
it  and  it  remain  mechanical,  unentwined  with 
sincerity  save  of  intention,  he  fails.  In  this 
way  Swinburne  has  failed.  Too  often,  if  not 
always,  his  words  are  only  words,  involving 
scarce  even  a  wish,  or  a  passionate  inability,  to 
believe.  For  the  poems  on  dead  men  there  is 
more  excuse.  The  fancies,  superstitions  or  old 
beliefs  were  in  part  called  up  by  the  sorrow  of 
indignation,  pity,  or  regret.  Yet  the  variety 
of  solutions  offered,  or  entertained,  or,  in  some 
cases,  accepted,  is  something  too  great,  and  it 
may  be  felt  that  the  poet  too  easily  laid  hold 

205 


A.    C.    SWINRURNE 

of  what  was  pathetic  or  in  some  otlier  way 
conventionally  fit  for  poetry.  Taken  alone,  the 
confession  of  it;noranc'e,  as  in  the  verses  on  his 
father,  is  dignified  and  suitable,  and  so  might 
any  of  the  other  attitudes  have  been  ;  but  Swin- 
burne had  assumed  the  part  of  elegist,  and  too 
often  finding  himself  with  little  to  say,  or  little 
that  would  go  into  his  verses,  he  fell  into  a  sort 
of  professionaHsm  in  which  he  did  merely  better 
than  other  professionals. 

Swinburne  was  happier  in  writing  of  death 
dramatically,  and  not  upon  a  definite  personal 
occasion.  He  used  an  even  greater  freedom  of 
choice  among  the  many  states  of  bliss  and  pain, 
rest  and  annihilation,  which  have  been  fancied 
or  beHeved  to  follow  the  stilling,  stiffening, 
chilling,  and  silencing  of  the  body.  It  is,  for 
example,  perfectly  effective  and  natural  when 
Chastelard,  in  the  pride  of  his  life,  deliberately 
asking  for  death,  reflects  that  he  is  to  go  "where 
a  man  lies  with  all  his  loves  put  out  and  his  lips 
full  of  earth."  Whatever  his  religion  promised 
him,  he  knew  that  as  a  lover  the  sum  of  his  fate 
was  to  be  that.  The  lover's  wish  in  Tlie  Triumph 
of  Time  is  equally  to  be  accepted.  He  desires 
to  be  dead  and  buried  with  his  false  mistress : 

Clasped  and  clothed  in  the  cloven  clay 

Out  of  the  world's  way,  out  of  the  light.  .  .  . 

and    yet    not    wholly    dead,    but    slumbering 

200 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

dreamily,  in  a  quiet  where  they  would  "  laugh 
low,  live  softly,  murmur  and  muse,"  and  even 
something  more.  Or,  he  says,  he  will  go  down 
to  the  sea,  his  "  mother,"  and  find  a  grave,  and 
"sleep  and  move  with  the  moving  ships,"  and 
know  of  nothing.  The  lust  of  a  miserable  one 
after  an  unimaginable  tranquilHty,  an  unimagin- 
able annihilation,  stirs  emotion  without  surprise ; 
and  the  same  can  be  said  of  the  utterly  satisfied 
lover's  feeling  in  the  rondel.  Kissing  Her  Hah% 
that  nothing  could  be  added  to  him,  save  per- 
haps death,  which  I  suppose  is  regarded  as  in 
some  magnificent  way  dignifying  and  solemniz- 
ing without  destroying.  Iseult,  in  Tristram  of 
Lyonesse,  thinks  of  a  Hell  where  she  would  be 
happy  if  only  she  knew  that  her  lover  was  with 
God ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  if  he  is  to  join 
her  in  Hell  he  will  not  be  disconsolate  with 
such  love  as  hers.  At  another  time  she  thinks 
there  would  be  some  joy  in  death,  to  be  made 
one  with  Nature,  and  "lost  in  the  sun's  light 
and  the  all-girdling  sea,"  forgotten  and  forgetting 
— nay,  she  would  not  forget  all  things.  The 
poet  himself  thinks  of  death  for  them  otherwise. 
He  speaks  of  Tristram  sailing  home  "  to  sleep 
in  home-born  earth  at  last,"  and  when  the  end 
comes  it  will  deliver  them  to  "  perpetual  rest .  .  . 
from  bondage  and  the  fear  of  time  set  free." 
He  imagines  for  them  a  kind  of  happiness  and 

207 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

distinction  in  lying  dead  at  peace  so  near  the 
sea,  troubled  by  notliing,  whatever  *' fear  or 
fancy  sailh."  Then  he  allows  himself  the  plea- 
sure of  thinking  what  a  "  sublime  sweet  sepul- 
chre "  the  sea  would  be,  and  forthwith  he 
supposes  their  grave  swallowed  up  by  the 
waters : 

But  peace  they  have  that  none  may  gain  who  live, 
And  rest  about  them  that  no  love  can  give. 
And  over  them,  while  death  and  life  shall  be. 
The  light  and  sound  and  darkness  of  the  sea. 

lAke  the  lover  in  T/ic  Trhunph  of  Time,  he  thinks 
of  this  as  in  some  sort  a  noble  peace.  One  of 
his  few  solely  and  explicitly  personal  poems,  Kx 
Voto,  expresses  the  poet's  own  preference  for 
such  a  grave,  if  he  might  choose.  In  his  last 
hour,  he  says,  he  would  pray  for  this  one  thing 
from  "  the  birth-god  of  his  day,"  that  he  should 
not  lie  in  the  earth,  but  in  "a  bed  of  larger 
girth,  chaster  and  colder."  For,  he  protests,  he 
was  not  earth's  child,  but  the  sea's,  bred  by  her 
and  "  the  wind,  her  brother,"  having  in  his  veins 
like  wine  her  "  sharp  salt  blood  "  ;  and  he  recalls 
how  once  he  was  near  drowned,  and  how  he  was 
glad  it  was  the  sea  that  offered  him  "  death  to 
drink."  He  compares  the  earth  to  the  sea  which 
never  even  seems  to  be  subject  and  not  free.  The 
sea  slakes  all  thirst  for  ever,  and,  rising  to  a 
strange  ecstasy  at  this  thought,  the  poet  begs 

208 


LATER    POEMS:     RESULTS 

the  sea  to  take  him,  alive  or  dead,  when  his  time 
shall  come.  Though  Shelley's  fate  and  the 
several  verses  where  he  seems  to  foretell  it  may- 
have  had  some  share  in  begetting  Swinburne's 
poem,  which  was  ignored,  as  it  fell  out,  both  by 
the  sea  and  by  his  birth-god,  Ex  Voto  has  in 
it  something  of  an  instinctive  rapture,  such  as 
cannot  be  felt  in  Swinburne's  other  thoughts  on 
death.  It  is  not  enough  to  forbid  the  conclusion 
that  neither  divination  nor  meditation  taught 
him  anything  new,  or  revived  in  him  with  fresh 
force  anything  old,  on  what  is  hereafter. 

Swinburne's  last  volume  of  poems,  A  Channel 
Passage  and  Other  Poems,  was  made  up  of  the 
same  elements  as  the  former  books,  but  having 
a  large  proportion  of  pieces  openly  or  obviously 
connected  with  various  occasions  political  or 
private.  The  hand  had  not  lost  its  cunning ; 
here  and  there  the  grace  was  beautiful ;  over 
several  poems  like  Tlie  Altar  of  Righteousness, 
lay  a  solemnity  with  a  new  shade  of  seriousness 
in  it ;  the  heroics  of  the  prologues  to  a  number 
of  Elizabethan  plays  were  clear  and  strong. 
But  except  in  the  dedication,  the  volume  is 
weaker  as  well  as  graver  and  more  even  in  tone. 
Perhaps  no  quality  can  be  missed  except  that 
which  came  of  the  happy  combination  of  all  the 
others.  The  poet  piped  and  the  words  danced  ; 
it  had  never  been  a  matter  of  words  only  or  the 
o  209 


A.    C.    SWINIUIUNE 

last  would  now  have  been  as  the  first.  His 
power  liad  lasted  for  full  thirty  years,  up  to  tlie 
Talc  of  Balcn  in  1896.  It  is  even  possible  that 
another  subject  like  the  story  of  Halen  would 
have  helped  his  powers  to  combine  even  later 
than  1896. 


210 


IX 

TRISTRAM  OF  LYONESSE:  THE  TALE 
OF  BALEN 

Swinburne's  two  long  verse  narratives  show  his 
powers  at  a  height  only  excelled  in  a  score  of  his 
best  short  poems,  since  whatever  the  narrative 
form  refused  to  him  which  the  lyric  could  not 
have  done — and  that  was  little — the  old  tales  of 
Tristram  and  Balen  made  up  for  it,  and  he  inter- 
wove with  them  the  richest  of  his  own  spirit-stuff. 
Tristram  of  Lyoncsse  followed  two  years  after 
Songs  of  the  Springtides,  and  with  them  repre- 
sents a  brilliant  middle  period  in  Swinburne's 
art,  when,  in  the  earlier  forties  of  his  age,  he  was 
able  to  combine  the  ardour  of  Songs  Before 
Sunrise  with  the  richness  of  the  first  Poems  and 
Ballads.  In  undertaking  to  "  rehandle  the  death- 
less legend  of  Tristram,"  he  says,  his  aim  was 
"simply  to  present  that  story,  not  diluted  and 
debased  as  it  has  been  in  our  own  time  by  other 
hands,  but  undefaced  by  improvement  and  unde- 
formed  by  transformation,  as  it  was  known  to 
the   age   of  Dante  wherever  the  chronicles  of 

211 


A.    C.    S  VV  I  N  lUJ  U  N  K 

romance  found  hearin<^,  from  Ercildoune  to 
Florence  ;  and  not  in  the  epic  or  romantic  form 
of  sustained  and  continuous  narrative,  but  mainly 
through  a  succession  of  dramatic  scenes  or  pic- 
tures with  descriptive  settings  or  backgrounds " 

It  is  not,  in  fact,  a  fresh  creative  work  upon 
the  foundation  of  the  old  tale,  Ijut  a  series  of 
lyrical  studies  from  it  wiiich  do  in  fact  present 
the  main  outlines  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  a 
prior  knowledge  unnecessary,  but  yield  all  their 
fullest  savours  to  those  who  know  and  love  the 
tale  like  the  poet.  Those  who  do  not  thus  know 
and  love  it  may  think  it  buried  deep  under  the 
inessential  magnificence  of  the  poet's  enthusiasm 
and  sympathy  with  each  stage  of  the  tale.  He' 
has  given  out  of  his  life  to  make  their  dead 
life  live  some  days  of  his.  Swinburne  himself 
seems  to  be  in  love  with  Iseult,  to  give  her  the 
amorous  adoration  which  had  small  outlet  in  the 
books  since  Cliastclard  and  Poems  and  Ballads. 
Fie  loves  her  before  Tristram ;  he  pictures  her 
body  when  yet  her  love 

Watched  out  its  virgin  virgil  in  soft  pride 
And  unkissed  expectition 

as  if  he  were  watching  her  as  Lorenzo  watched 
Madeleine  on  St.  Agnes'  Eve.  The  narrative 
core  of  the  poem  is  sound  and  good,  but  the 
whole  is  a  praise  of  love  that  mingles  the  lofty 

212 


TRISTRAM    OF    LYONESSE 

fervour  of  Epipsychidion  with  the  sensual  fer- 
vour of  Carew's  Rapture. 

In  the  first  hne  of  the  Prelude  he  sings  of 

Love  that  is  first  and  last  of  all  things  made. 
The  light  that  has  the  living  world  for  shade  .  .   . 

and  how  love  brought  these  two  lovers  to  death : 

Through  many  and  lovely  days  and  much  delight 
Led  those  twain  to  the  lifeless  light  of  night. 

"  Yea,  but  what  then  ? "  he  asks,  and  in  the 
thought  of  the  great  love  of  famous  lovers  he  is 
rapt  away  and  would  believe,  and  have  us  agree, 
that  their  fame 

Till  story  and  song  and  glory  and  all  things  sleep 
is  as  it  were  a  satisfying  heaven  in  which 
they  re-enact  their  love  before  us  to  a  glorious 
amorous  music.  Tristram  tells  Iseult  love-tales 
before  their  love  begins,  and  she  compares  her- 
self with  the  women  of  the  tales,  in  one  beautiful 
scene  measuring  her  height  against  the  mast,  and 
at  the  end  exclaims  : 

What  good  is  it  to  God  that  such  should  die  ? 

He  sings  her  love  songs  and  still  she  loves  him 
but  "  in  holy  girlish  wise,"  until  the  love  potion 
makes  their  four  lips  "one  burning  mouth." 
Thenceforward  the  poem  is  a  frenzy  of  bodily 
love  either  desirous  or  in  mid-rapture,  against  a 
background  of  keen  air,  wild  lands,  tempestuous 
and  rockbound  sea,   with  crying   of  hunt  and 

213 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

battle,  "and  many  a  large  delight  of  hawk  and 
hound.     Alone  together  at  night  in  summer, 

Only  with  stress  of  soft  fierce  hands  she  prest 
Between  the  throl)bing  blossimis  of  her  breast 
His  ardent  face,  and  through  his  hair  lier  breath 
Went  quivering  as  when  life  is  hard  on  death  ; 
And  with  strong  trembling  fingers  she  strained  fast 
His  head  into  her  bosom  ;  till  at  last. 
Satiate  with  sweetness  of  that  burning  bed 
His  eyes  afire  with  tears  he  raised  his  head 
And  laughed  into  her  lips  ;  and  all  his  heart 
Filled  hers ;  then  face  from  face  fell,  and  apart 
Each  hung  on  each  with  panting  lips,  and  felt 
Sense  into  sense  and  spirit  in  spirit  melt. 
*'  Hast  thou  no  sword  ?     I  would  not  live  till  day  ; 
O  love,  this  night  and  we  must  pass  away, 
It  must  die  soon,  and  let  not  us  die  late." 

Here  echoes,  "  Ah  God  !  Ah,  God  I  that  day 
should  be  so  soon "  from  Poems  and  Ballads; 
yet  the  poet  and  Tristram  do  not  deny 

Glory  and  grace  and  reverence  and  delight 
To  wedded  woman  by  her  bridal  right. 

Doubly  splendid  in  contrast  with  all  the  soft 
sweetness  and  bitterness  of  love,  which  is  in  its 
turn  all  the  softer  for  it,  comes  : 

The  breeze,  the  bloom,  the  splendour  and  the  sound. 
That  stung  like  fire  the  hunter  and  the  hound, 
The  pulse  of  wind,  the  passion  of  the  sea, 
The  rapture  of  the  woodland.  .  .  . 

This  interchange  of  "the  lovely  fight  of  love  and 

214 


TRISTRAM    OF    LYONESSE 

sleep  "  with  the  open  air  makes  up  for  the  lack  of 

drama  and  continuous  narrative. 

As  Tristram  and   Iseult  are  never  anything 

but  passionate  so  nothing  in  Nature  is  loveless  or 

unrapturous.     Thus,  the  hovering  sea-gull  turns : 

With  eyes  wherein  the  keen  heart  glittering  yearns 

Down  toward  the  sweet  green  sea  whereon  the  broad  moon 

burns. 
And  suddenly,  soul-stricken  with  delight, 
Drops,  and  the  glad  wave  gladdens.  .  .  . 

Even  drowned  men  are  called  "  sleepers  in  the 
soft  green  sea,"  as  if  they  had  some  joy  of  it. 
The  wastes  of  Wales  are  "  wild  glad  "  wastes  of 
"glorious"  Wales.  The  spear  thirsts  and  the 
sword  is  hungry.  The  sea  takes  the  sun  "on 
her  bare  bright  bosom  as  a  bride."  The  arms  of 
Tristram  swimming  are  "amorous,"  and  the 
touch  of  his  lips  and  the  wave  is  a  "  sharp  sweet 
minute's  kiss."  The  leaves  of  Broceliande  are 
"full  of  sweet  sound,  full  of  sweet  wind  and 
sun." 

This  alternation  of  Love  and  Nature,  except 
for  one  who  persists  in  wanting  a  tale,  is  strong 
enough  almost  to  hide  some  of  the  few  points 
where  Swinburne  has  kept  the  tale  well  in  view, 
as  where  he  reminds  us  that  the  night  when 
Iseult  of  Ireland  is  praying  to  God,  and  at  the 
same  time  saying  : 

Blest  am  I  beyond  women  even  herein, 

That  beyond  all  born  women  is  my  sin, 

215 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

was  the  night  wlien  Iseult  of  Brittany  married 
Tristram,  "a  maiden  in  a  marriage  bower." 
Nor  are  such  points  necessary.  Swinburne's 
love  of  Iseult  and  her  lover,  his  joy  to  be  with 
them  in  Northumberland,  riding  together,  the 
rapture  which  lie  shares  with  Tristram  in  swim- 
ming, his  satisfaction  when  at  last  in  death  their 
four  lips  make  "  one  silent  mouth  "  and  he  can 
give  them  a  "  sublime  sweet  sepulchre "  under 
the  sea,  these  sympathies  make  us  well  content 
that  he  should  merely  give  us  the  fragments  of 
the  story  and  spend  himself  in  magnifying  them 
and  giving  them  a  golden  atmosphere.  I  should 
have  been  glad  to  do  without  the  methodical 
nightly  substitution  of  Bragwaine  for  Iseult  in 
the  bed  of  Mark ;  above  all,  without  the  letter, 
found  after  his  death,  in  which  Tristram  is 
alleged  to  have  explained  that  their  love  had 
been  "  no  choice  of  will,  but  chance  and  sorcer- 
ous  art "  and  to  have  prayed  for  pardon,  Avhich 
was  given  by  Mark  with  tears. 

These  things  only  speck  the  mighty  lyric, 
which  sometimes  swoons  with  its  own  extra- 
vagance but  never  drops  until  it  reaches 

The  light  and  sound  and  darkness  of  the  sea. 

Rightly  does  Swinburne  call  Iseult  and  Tristram 
"  my  lovers,"  "  my  twain."  Their  love,  their 
youth,    their    beauty    are    equal    in    splendour 

216 


TRISTRAM    OF    LYONESSE 

to  the  sun,  the  sea,  the  hberty,  which  he  so 
loved.  All  his  characteristic  ways  with  words 
help  to  enrich  the  poem,  chiming  of  words, 
repetition,  duplication  and  balancing  of  words 
and  thoughts,  abundance  of  full  vowels  and 
especially  of  the  vowel  of  "light"  and  "fire." 
The  lines  are  massive  or  rapid,  often  composed 
of  monosyllables,  broken  up  in  every  possible 
way  and  frequently  extended  to  alexandrines, 
while  the  rhymes  are  frequently  in  triplets 
instead  of  pairs ;  when  he  once  adopts  one  or 
both  of  these  variations,  he  does  so  several  times 
in  fairly  close  succession,  just  as  when  he  once 
begins  a  line  with  an  important  word,  usually 
accented  on  the  first  syllable,  and  often  carried 
over  abruptly  from  the  preceding  line,  he  does 
so  two  or  three  times,  for  example,  here : 

.   .   .  Shattered  from  his  steed 

Fell,  as  a  mainmast  ruining,  Palamede, 

Stunned.  .  .  . 

He  uses  a  pair  of  lines  similar  but  different,  at 
irregular  intervals,  to  break  in  as  a  sea-burden 
upon  Iseult's  prayer  with  a  sound  of  storm,  and 
uses  it  effectively. 

Doing  without  much  action  he  inevitably  falls 
into  excessive  multiplication  without  variety. 
When  Tristram  has  said  that  Iseult's  hands  used 
to  be  more  to  him  than  watersprings  to  shadeless 
lands  he  says  also  what  her  hair,  her  mouth  and 

217 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

her  breast  used  to  be,  and  so  everywhere. 
When  Iseult  has  been  Hstenin^  to  Tristram's 
story  and  siirlis  and  sees  the  sun  at  that  moment 
rise  up,  the  sun's  face  burns  against  hers  hke  a 
lover's  :  but  also  the  sea  shone  and  shivered  like 
angels'  wings ;  a  wind  shook  the  foam  flowers  as 
a  rainfall  of  sea  roses,  for  the  foam  was  like 
blossoms ;  the  moon  withered  as  a  face  in  a 
swoon ;  the  air  was  moved  with  delight  and 
passion  as  of  love,  until  air,  light  and  wave 
seemed  full  of  beating  rest  like  a  new-mated 
dove's  heart,  and  had  a  motion  as  of  one  God's 
beating  breast. 

Everything  is  done  which  can  make  the  poem 
everywhere  grand  or  sumptuous,  and  inevitably, 
since  all  comes  from  Swinburne,  it  is  at  times 
stiff  and  heavy  laden.  Every  inch  is  Swin- 
burne's. Compare  it  with  Romeo  and  Juliet. 
There  the  love  and  beauty  is  so  much  beyond 
the  sum  of  the  details,  that  beautiful  as  they 
often  are  the  effect  of  the  whole  astonishes  and 
makes  the  words  seem  the  servants  of  greater 
spirits.  No  catalogue  of  beautiful  things  and 
no  cabinet  of  beautiful  words  can  produce 
beauty,  and  Swinburne's  poem  is  far  more  than 
a  catalogue  or  a  cabinet ;  but  the  total  result  of 
his  expenditure  is  not  astonisliing  or  dispropor- 
tionate. Shakespeare  uses  the  breath  of  life, 
Swinburne  uses  gold,  frankincense,  and  myrrh. 

218 


TRISTRAM    OF    LYONESSE 

But  compare  it  with  Laon  and  Cythna  and 
Endymion  and  it  is  at  least  as  readable  and 
exuberant.  Few  poets  have  more  gold,  frank- 
incense, and  myrrh  to  offer,  and  having  the 
breath  of  life  strong  w4thin  himself  he  uses 
them  successfully  to  sweeten  and  to  adorn.  His 
dangling  sentences,  his  use  of  addition  instead 
of  development,  his  abuse  of  some  of  his 
favourite  habits  or  devices  of  style,  are  not  in 
excess  of  what  is  to  be  expected  in  the  work  of 
a  man's  hands.  He  undertook  a  lesser  adven- 
ture than  Tennyson  in  the  Idylls ;  having  made 
no  attempt  to  lift  his  hero  and  heroine  out  of  an 
"  impossible  age  of  an  imaginary  world "  he 
avoids  Tennyson's  failure.  He  creates  nothing, 
but  his  songs  about  these  well-beloved  shadows 
constitute  him  one  of  their  most  perfect  lovers, 
and  in  English  at  least  their  most  perfect  poet. 

The  Tale  of  Balcn,  dedicated  to  his  mother  in 
his  fifty-ninth  year,  was  the  fine  flower  of 
Swinburne's  later  work.  By  comparison  with 
Tristram  it  is  naked  narrative,  and  as  near  as 
possible  to  the  tale  of  Malory.  From  the  Lady 
of  Shalott  and  the  lovely  fragment  of  Launcelot 
and  Guinevere  he  took  the  metre  which  made 
entire  nakedness  of  narrative  impossible.  Tenny- 
son's own  version  of  Balin  and  Balan,  where 
the  story  is  moralized  to  death  with  (I  believe) 

219 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

no  gain  to  monility,  helped  him  if  at  all  only  by 
provoeation.  In  Tennyson's  poem  the  deaths  of 
the  brothers  were  due  to  a  fit  of  IJalen's  temper 
whieh  he  had  earnestly  striven  to  eorreet.  Swin- 
burne retained  the  "  custom  of  the  castle "  by 
which  Balan  had  to  fight  with  every  comer,  and 
at  last  with  Balen  who  was  concealed  under 
strange  armour,  'iliis  irrational,  but  not  unlife- 
like  and  certainly  imposing,  fate  brings  an  end 
not  less  symbolic  in  its  beauty  now  than  it 
could  have  seemed  in  the  fifteenth  century,  and 
we  are  satisfied  when  Merlin  writes  the  Ijrothers' 
names  on  the  tomb  and  weeps : 

For  all  his  heart  within  him  yearned 
With  pity  like  as  fire  that  burned. 
The  fate  his  fateful  eye  discerned 
Far  off  now  dimmed  it,  ere  he  turned 

His  face  toward  Camelot,  to  tell 
Arthur  of  all  the  storms  that  woke 
Round  Balen,  and  the  dolorous  stroke. 
And  how  that  last  blind  battle  broke 

The  consummated  spell. 
"Alas,"  King  Arthur  said,  "this  day 
I  have  heard  the  worst  that  woe  mii^ht  say  : 
For  in  this  world  that  wanes  away 
I  know  not  two  such  knights  as  they." 

This  is  the  tale  that  memory  writes 
Of  men  whosi;  names  like  stars  shall  stand, 
Balen  and  Balan,  sure  of  hand, 
Two  brethren  of  Northumberland, 

In  life  and  death  good  knights. 

Swinburne  himself  hardly  intervenes,  yet  Balen 
220 


TRISTRAM    OF    LYONESSE 

is  conspicuously  tinged  by  his  preferences. 
Tennyson  appears  to  translate  "  le  sauvage  "  as 
"  bad-tempered  "  :  Swinburne's  hero  is  "  called 
the  Wild  by  knights  whom  kings  and  courts 
make  tame.  ..."  He  was,  like  the  poet  him- 
self, "  a  northern  child  of  earth  and  sea  " ;  and 
often  the  knight's  mood  and  Nature's  have  that 
brightness  which  he  loved  to  praise.  Every- 
where are  "  moors  and  woods  that  shone  and 
sang,"  a  "sunbright  wildwood  side,"  "bright 
snows,"  "  wild  bright "  coasts,  "  storm  bright " 
lands,  and  pride  of  summer  with  "  lordly 
laughter  in  her  eye " ;  men  "  drink  the  golden 
sunhght's  wine  with  joy's  thanksgiving  that  they 
live " ;  even  Tristram  is  "  bright  and  sad  and 
kind  "  ;  and  round  Balen  shines  a  brief  "  light  of 
joy  and  glory."  Nothing  could  be  more  charac- 
teristic of  Swinburne  out  of  doors,  and  away 
from  love  and  Victor  Hugo,  than  this  opening 
of  a  Canto : 

In  Autumn,  when  the  wind  and  sea 
Rejoice  to  live  and  laugh  to  be. 
And  scarce  the  blast  that  curbs  the  tree 
And  bids  before  it  quail  and  flee 

The  fiery  foliage,  where  its  brand 
Is  radiant  as  the  seal  of  spring, 
Sounds  less  delight,  and  waves  a  wing 
Less  lustrous,  life's  loud  thanksgiving 

Puts  life  in  sea  and  land. 
High  hope  in  Balen's  heart  alight 
Laughed.   .  .  . 

221 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

All  this  briorhtiiess  is  quenched  once  and  for  ever 
in  pert'cct  gloom. 

The  story  is  clearly  and  fully  told,  with  only 
such  praise  and  dalliance  as  is  necessary  to  depict 
the  background  of  earth  loved  by  knight  and 
poet,  and  to  flatter  the  graces  of  the  stanza. 
Each  Canto  begins  "  In  hawthorn  time,"  or  "  In 
linden  time,"  "  In  autumn,"  "  In  winter,"  or  the 
like,  without  confounding  or  obscuring  the  tale. 
The  stanza  causes  a  good  deal  of  length  and 
roundaboutness,  but  seldom  fails  to  be  gracious. 
It  can  be  grand  also,  as  where  Balen  knows  that 
he  shall  die : 

Nor  fate  nor  fear  might  overcast 
The  soul  now  near  its  peace  at  last. 
Suddenly^  thence  as  forth  he  past, 
A  mighty  and  a  deadly  blast 

Blown  of  a  hunting  horn  he  heard, 
As  when  the  chase  hath  nobly  sped. 
"  That  blast  is  blown  for  me,"  he  said, 
"  The  prize  am  I  who  am  yet  not  dead/ 

And  smiled  upon  the  word. 

Thenceforward  there  is  no  delay ;  all  is  knightly 
act  and  speech,  of  a  ballad  dignity  yet  with  no 
mere  simpleness. 

Those  who  read  the  tale  here  for  the  first  time 
will  never  be  in  difficulty  and  rarely  impatient. 
Those  who  know  it  in  Malory  and  have  sought 
it  in  Tennyson  will  go  to  IVie  Tale  of  Balen 
for  the  lustrous  background  and  for  the  con- 

222 


TRISTRAM    OF    LYONESSE 

tinuous  but  not  monotonous  pleasure  of  the 
stanza,  but  also  for  the  constant  nobihty  of 
temper  ;  for  some  tenderness  like  that  where  the 
deadly-wounded  Balan  crawls  on  hands  and  knees 
towards  Balen,  as  when  : 

Beneath  their  mother's  eye  had  he, 
A  babe  that  laughed  with  joy  to  be. 
Made  toward  him  standing  by  her  knee 
For  love's  sake  long  ago.  .   .  . 

Sometimes  the  metrical  form  is  allowed  its 
own  way,  to  form  perfect  stanzas  lovable  for 
their  own  sakes :  as  often  the  narrative  sweeps 
through  the  verses  without  submitting  to  them, 
yet  without  shattering  them.  It  becomes  too 
often  abstract,  even  fantastically  so,  as  here : 

And  seeing  that  shame  and  peril,  fear 
Bade  wrath  and  grief  awake  and  hear 
What  shame  should  say  in  fame's  wide  ear 
If  she,  by  sorrow  sealed  more  dear 

Than  joy  might  make  her,  so  should  die.  .  .  . 

but  otherwise  the  style  is  less  mannered  and  has 
gained  simplicity  from  its  theme  and  from  the 
stanza  perhaps  some  sweetness.  The  charac- 
teristic play  of  words  is  not  always  happy,  but 
is  only  once  as  unhappy  as  in  the  line  about  the 
wave  bounding  on  the  land  and  confounding 

The  bounding  bulk  whereon  it  bounds. 

The  success  of  this  narrative,  the  failure  of  many 

223 


A.    C.    S  VV  I  N  B  U  R  N  E 

of  his  lyric,  descriptive  and  reflective  poems 
written  before  it,  jind  of  all  written  after  it, 
proves  that  Swinburne  owed  much  to  the  tan- 
gible substratum  of  an  old  tale  and  justifies  a 
regret  that  he  did  not  more  often  trust  it. 


224 


X 

THE  PLAYS 

After  Balen  came  a  drama,  Rosamofid,  Queen 
of'  the  Lombards,  after  that  A  Cfuuinel  Passage, 
but  Swinburne's  last  book,  The  Duke  of  Gandia, 
was  another  drama.  He  began  with  plays,  Rosa- 
mo7id,  and  The  Queen  Mothei',  and  Chastelard ; 
he  ended  with  a  play.  The  first  had  some 
qualities  of  the  lyrics  belonging  to  the  same 
period,  because  the  lovers  who  were  their  heroes 
and  heroines  gave  practice  and  excuse  for 
Swinburne's  amorous  extravagance  before  he 
appeared  himself  as  a  lyric  lord  of  love.  When 
once  he  had  so  appeared  he  seems  to  have  neg- 
lected drama  for  many  years.  It  was  not  until 
1874,  three  years  after  Songs  Before  Sunrise, 
that  Bothwell  was  pubHshed.  He  dedicated  it 
like  Chastelard  to  Hugo,  "  as  a  river  gives  up  to 
the  sea  its  soul."  In  this  dedication  he  called  it 
an  "epic  drama,"  and  years  afterwards  while 
approving  this  title  he  spoke  of  it  as  less  a 
tragedy  than  a  "  chronicle  history."  It  was 
what  he  called  it,  an  "ambitious,  conscientious, 
p  225 


A.    C.    SWINIUJRNE 

and  comprehensive  piece  of  work  " ;  yet  for  a 
nineteenth-century  lyric  poet,  in  an  age  without 
a  poetic  drama,  to  reviv^e  a  form  early  discarded 
by  Elizabethan  dramatists,  was  an  adventure 
more  grim  than  serious.  That  he  read  it  aloud 
to  his  friends  without  causing  any  suffering  that 
has  yet  become  famous  is  a  superb  testimony  to 
his  voice,  to  his  character,  and  to  his  friends. 
For  Bothivcll  is  four  times  as  long  as  Chastclardy 
and  contains  four-hundred-line  speeches.  It  is 
a  monstrous  achievement,  the  most  solemn  proof 
existing  of  Swinburne's  power  of  fundamental 
brainwork.  The  self-sacrifice  was  little  short  of 
crucifixion.  Tlie  style,  for  example,  is  allowed 
to  retain  hardly  more  than  the  tricks  of  his 
characteristic  style,  some  chiming  vowels,  here 
and  there  a  phrase  like  "  clothed  and  crowned 
with  force  and  fear,"  or  "  wiles  and  songs  and 
sins,"  or  a  passage  of  vowels  like  : 

But  I  would  not  be  weary,  let  that  be 

Part  of  my  wish,     I  could  be  glad  and  good 

Living  so  low,  with  little  labours  set 

And  little  sleeps  and  watches,  night  and  day 

Falling  and  flowing  as  small  waves  in  low  sea 

From  shine  to  shadow  and  back  and  out  and  in 

Among  the  firths  and  reaches  of  low  life : 

I  would  I  were  away  and  well.   .   .  . 

But  it  is  a  compromise  between  his  lyric  style 
and  a  kind  of  average  dramatic  blank  verse 
which  does  not  eschew  dullness.     Even  the  lyric 

226 


THE    PLAYS 

metre  of  Anima  Anceps  is  a  little  withered  by 
the  shadow : 

Lord  Love  went  Maying 
Where  Time  was  playing, 
In  light  hands  weighing 

Light  hearts  with  sad  ; 
Crowned  king  with  peasant. 
Pale  past  with  present, 
Harsh  hours  with  pleasant. 

Good  hopes  with  bad  ; 
Nor  dreamed  how  fleeter 
Than  Time's  swift  metre. 
O'er  all  things  sweeter 

How  clothed  with  power. 
The  murderess  maiden 
Mistrust  walks  laden 

With   red   fruit  ruined  and  dead   white 
flower.   .  .  . 

Mary's  speech  after  Rizzio's  singing  is  pretty  as 
the  speeches  so  often  are  after  the  songs : 

What  does  Death  i'  the  song  ? 
Can  they  not  let  love  live,  but  must  needs  make 
His  grave  with  singing?  'Tis  the  trick  of  the  song 
That  finds  no  end  else. 

Rizzio  answers : 

An  old  trick ; 
Your  merrier  songs  are  mournfuller  sometimes 
Than  very  tears  are. 

At  a  hundred  points  Mary's  words  show  how 
fondly  and  carefully  the  poet  followed  her,  as 
when  she  says : 

227 


A.    C.    SWINHURNE 

Ay,  we  were  fools,  we  Maries  twain.   .   .  . 

I  am  not  tired  of  that  I  see  not  here. 

The  sun  and  the  large  air,  and  the  sweet  earth.   .   .   . 

But  the  play,  with  all  its  conscientious  study  of 
characters  and  events,  its  chaste  workmanship, 
its  many  flowers,  is  intolerable  when  we  think 
what  Swinburne  could  have  done  with  this  sub- 
ject in  narrative,  spending  himself  in  rhyme  and 
rhythm  and  feeling  directly  upon  Mary,  instead 
of  indirectly. 

Marij  Stuart,  dedicated,  like  the  other  two 
portions  of  the  trilogy,  to  Hugo,  appeared  be- 
tween Songs  of  the  Sprhigtidcs  and  Tristram 
of  Lyonesse,  a  favourable  time  when  Swin- 
burne's genius  was  ripe  and  still  ardent.  There 
is  some  unspoilt  witness  to  its  period,  as  when 
JNlary  at  Chartley  cries  : 

That  I  were  now  in  saddle  .   .   .  new-mounted  now 
I  shall  ride  right  through  shine  and  shade  of  spring 
With  heart  and  habit  of  a  bride,  and  bear 
A  brow  more  bright  than  fortune  .  .  .  ; 

and  when  a  little  afterwards  she  sings : 

"An  ye  maun  braid  your  yellow  hair," 

and  Mary  Beaton  remembers  singing  it  after  her 
nurse,  and  weeping  upon  it  "  in  France  at  six 
years  old  to  think  of  Scotland  "  ;  or  when  the 
Queen  thinks  of  the  moors  in  comparison  with 
the  midlands : 

228 


THE    PLAYS 

There  the  wind  and  sun 
Make  madder  mirth  by  midsummer,  and  fill 
With  broader  breadth  and  lustier  length  of  light 
The  heartier  hours  that  clothe  for  even  and  dawn 
Our  bosom-belted  billowy-blossoming  hills 
Where  hearts  break  out  in  laughter  like  the  sea 
For  miles  of  heaving  heather  .  .  .  ; 

or  when  Chastelard's  song — which  she  thinks 
Remy  Belleau's — sung  by  Mary  Beaton  at 
Fotheringay,  makes  her  think  of  her  French 
years : 

Laughter  of  love  and  lovely  stress  of  lutes. 
And  in  between  the  passion  of  them  borne 
Sounds  of  swords  crossing  ever,  as  of  feet 
Dancing,  and  life  and  death  still  equally 
Blithe  and  bright-eyed  from  battle  .  .  . 

or  when  Barbara  describes  the  last  minutes  of 
the  Queen  to  Mary  Beaton,  until  the  very  last 
when  the  listener  uncovers  her  eyes  to  see  for 
herself : 

He  strikes  awry  :  she  stirs  not.     Nay,  but  now 
He  strikes  aright,  and  ends  it. 

But  as  a  rule  the  speech  is  made  roundabout  or 
dull  by  the  blank  verse  and  the  Elizabethan 
influence ;  the  dangling  relative  clauses  may  be 
true  to  the  characters  of  Sir  Amyas  Faulet  and 
Sir  Drew  Drury,  but  even  so  are  an  unpardon- 
able realism.  The  trick  of  repeating  "  all,"  here 
and  in  several  other  places  : 

229 


A.    C.    SWINIUTRNE 

By  minds  not  always  all  ignobly  mad 

Nor  all  made  poisonous  b)'  false  grain  of  faith, 

She  shall  be  a  world's  wonder  to  all  time  .  .   . 

is  a  poor  compensation  for  the  loss  of  what 
gives  life  to  IVtalassijis,  On  the  Cfi//'s,  and 
Tristram  of  Li/oncssc,  and  cannot  save  the  play 
from  being  a  conscientious  veisification  of  facts 
and  conjectures,  in  which  only  one  half  of  the 
poet  was  employed.  Even  into  the  prose  of 
the  pseudonymous  A  Yciifs  Letters  he  had 
put  as  much  of  himself  and  at  least  as  much 
of  his  knowledge  of  men  and  women  and  old 
women,  and  that  in  a  form  sufficient  in  itself 
and  never  tedious. 

Marino  Faliero  gave  Swinburne  an  outlet 
for  his  hate  of  God  and  king  and  priest,  his 
love  of  Man,  Liberty,  Tyrannicide,  Italy, 
Mazzini,  and  of  the  Sea.  But  it  is  hard  to  see 
why  Swinburne  should  thus  deface  speech  with- 
out making  it  poetry : 

Sir, 
For  one  wrong  done  you,  being  but  man  as  we, 
If  wrath  make  lightning  of  your  life,  in  us, 
For  all  wrongs  done  of  all  our  lords  alive 
Through  all  our  years  of  living,  doubt  you  not 
But  wrath  shall  climb  as  high  toward  heaven,  and  hang 
As  hot  with  hope  of  thunder. 

It  is  not  Swinburne,  and  it  is  not  Shakespeare, 
it  is  not  speech,  and  it  is  not  poetry ;  it  is  the 
product  of  an  attempt  to  combine  all  four. 
Often  he  puts  noble  words  into  the  mouth  of 

230 


THE    PLAYS 

a  noble  man,  and  the  last  speech  has  a  prophetic 
grandeur : 

I  go  not  as  a  base  man  goes  to  Death, 

But  great  of  hope :  God  cannot  will  that  here 

Some  day  shall  spring  not  Freedom  :  nor  perchance 

May  we,  long  dead,  not  know  it,  who  died  of  love 

For  dreams  that  were  and  truths  that  were  not.     Come  : 

Bring  me  toward  the  landing  whence  my  soul 

Sets  sail,  and  bid  God  speed  her  forth  to  sea. 

Yet  he  could  have  signified  his  admiration  of 
Marino  Faliero  in  a  briefer  or  less  mutilated 
fashion,  by  enveloping  him,  like  Tristram  or 
Balen,  in  a  great  love  or  wrath  of  verse.  The 
verse  here  is  by  no  means  negligible ;  some  of 
the  variations  are  original  and  definitely  extend 
blank  verse.  But  though  written  "  with  a  view 
to  being  acted  at  the  Globe,  the  Red  Bull,  or 
the  Black  Friars  "  before  audiences,  "  incredibly 
intelligent "  and  "  inconceivably  tolerant,"  which 
accepted  Chapman's  eloquence  instead  of  study 
of  character  and  interest  of  action,  it  has  to  be 
read  in  silence,  and  therefore  with  greater  need 
of  intelligence  and  tolerance.  It  seems  to  me 
to  resurrect  of  an  old  form  simply  the  archaism, 
to  make  a  tomb  for  eloquence. 

Swinburne  took  more  liberty  in  his  next  play. 
Perhaps  Greene's  tragedy  of  Selimus,  which 
contains  scenes  in  the  verse  forms  of  Don  Juan 
and  Venus  and  Adonis,  suggested  the  far  more 

231 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

cunning  and  far  more  various  schemes  of  rhyme 
in  Locrinc.  It  begins  with  couplets,  but  with 
each  scene  the  rhyming  is  clianged,  though  the 
hues  remain  decasyllabic,  until  the  last  restores 
the  couplets :  in  the  first  scene  of  the  fifth 
act  the  scheme  is  that  of  a  Shakespearean 
sonnet.  The  story  of  "  Sabrina  fair "  was  a 
"  wan  legend  "  hke  that  of  Tristram  and  15alen, 
and  the  poet  did  not  think  that  any  life  or  life- 
likeness  possessed  by  it  had  "suffered  from  the 
bondage  of  rhyme  or  been  sacrificed  to  the  exi- 
gence of  metre."  The  rhyming  in  fact  helps  to 
confine  the  *'  wan  legend  "  within  strait  hmits 
and  to  remind  the  reader  of  the  fact.  Only  a 
consummate  artist  could  have  made  this  choice 
and  so  justified  it.  He  tells  the  tale  and  he 
finds  abundant  good  excuse  for  such  indulgence 
as  in  her  mother  Estrild's  speech  to  Sabrina : 

.  .  .  Thou  hast  seen  the  great  sea  never^  nor  canst  dream 

How  fairer  far  than  earth's  most  lordly  stream 

It  rolls  its  royal  waters  here  and  there, 

Most  glorious  born  of  all  things  anywhere. 

Most  fateful  and  most  godlike  :  fit  to  make 

Men  love  life  better  for  the  sweet  sight's  sake 

And  less  fear  death  if  death  for  them  should  be 

Shrined  in  the  sacred  splendours  of  the  sea 

As  God  in  heaven's  raid  mystery.   .   .   . 

Estrild's  song,  "  Had  I  wist,  quoth  spring  to 
the  swallow,"  calls  forth  still  prettier  speeches 
from  the  child  Sabrina  : 

232 


THE    PLAYS 

.  .  .  Methought,  though  one  were  king  or  queen 
And  had  the  world  to  play  with,  if  one  missed 
What  most  were  good  to  have,  such  joy,  I  ween, 
Were  woeful  as  a  song  with  sobs  between. 
And  well  might  wail  for  ever,  "  Had  I  wist !  "  .   .  , 

But  rhyme,  dramatic  form,  and  the  "wan 
legend  "  bring  about  an  extraordinary  thinness 
in  Locriiie,  lightness  and  transparent  thinness. 
The  deaths  of  Locrine,  Estrild,  and  Sabrina, 
and  the  sudden  repentance  of  the  Queen 
Gwendolen,  are  neat  and  beauteous  in  accor- 
dance with  this  light,  thin  manner. 

"The  tragedy  of  The  Sisters"  wrote  Swin- 
burne, "  however  defective  it  may  be  in  theatri- 
cal interest  or  progressive  action,  is  the  only 
modern  English  play  I  know  in  which  realism 
in  the  reproduction  of  natural  dialogue  and 
accuracy  in  the  representation  of  natural  inter- 
course between  men  and  women  of  gentle  birth 
and  breeding  have  been  found  or  made  com- 
patible with  expression  in  genuine  if  simple 
blank  verse."  It  was  an  odd  ambition  to  twist 
and  confine  the  very  speech  of  ordinary  modern 
people  within  the  limits  of  decasyllabic  lines. 
The  result  was  that  the  descasyllabic  lines  were 
usually  decasyllabic  lines  and  nothing  more, 
while  the  speech  was  made  to  look  trivial  or 
weak,  because  it  was  without  the  concentration, 
and  that  colouring  from  the  inexpressible,  which 
are  essential  to  dramatic  poetry.     By  writing : 

233 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

But  if  she  does 
Love  you — if  you  can  win  her — as  I  think 
(There  !) — you're  the  h,ij)])iest  fellow  ever  born.  .   .   . 

he  tried  to  prove  tliat  his  class  talked  in  blank 
verse,  and  sometimes  as  here  : 

Woodlands  too  we  have, 
Have  we  not,  Mabel  ?  beech,  oak,  aspen  and  pine. 
And  Rediijie's  old  familiar  friend,  the  birch, 
With  all  its  blithe  lithe  bounty  of  buds  and  sprays 
For  hapless  boys  to  wince  at,  and  grow  red, 
And  feel  a  tingling  memory  prick  their  skins — 
Sting  till  their  burning  blood  seems  all  one  blush.  .   .   . 

to  prove  that  they  loved  the  chime  and  the  birch 
as  well  as  he  did.  What  he  does  prove,  as  in 
Love's  Cross  Currents,  is  that,  in  the  flesh,  men 
of  the  Eton-and-Army  and  outdoor  type,  frank, 
simple  and  chivalrous,  and  women  to  match, 
appealed  to  him.  AVhen  two  of  them,  lovers, 
are  dying  from  poison  accidentally  taken,  they 
converse  in  this  manner  : 

Reginald  :  Think  we  are  going  to  see 

Our  mother,  Mabel — Frank's  and  ours. 
Mabel:  I  will. 

But,  Reginald,  how  hard  it  is  to  go  ! 
Reginald  :       We  have  been  so  happy,  darling,  let  us  die 

Thinking  of  that,  and  thanking  God. 
Mabel :  I  will. 

Kiss  me.     Ah,  Redgie.     (^Dies.) 
Reginald:  Mabel!   I  am  here.     (Dies.) 

Sir  Arthur  :    They  could  have  lived  no  haj)pier  than  they  die. 

234 


THE    PLAYS 

This  can  hardly  be  taken  as  a  contribution  to  the 
natural  history  of  the  upper  classes,  but  rather 
as  a  testimony  to  a  poet's  sentimental  esteem 
of  them,  and  of  the  religion,  the  tradition  and 
the  birch  that  make  them,  like  those  two  breth- 
ren of  Northumberland,  "  in  life  and  death  good 
knights."  The  jealous  woman  who  causes  the 
tragedy  is  false  to  the  type.  She  is  allowed  to 
soliloquize  in  blank  verse  that  is  not  common 
speech,  a  concession  that  emphasizes  the  tame 
and  literal  naturalism  of  the  greater  part. 

Rosamond,  Queen  of  the  Lombards,  written 
when  Swinburne  was  past  sixty,  is  one  of  his 
best  plays.  The  revenge  taken  by  Rosamond 
upon  the  king  for  being  asked  to  pledge  the 
health  of  his  kingdom  in  a  cup  made  of  the 
skull  of  her  father,  whom  he  had  slain  in  battle, 
forms  a  tragic  story,  simple  and  brief  Its 
brevity  and  simplicity  help  Swinburne  to  his 
best  compromise  between  his  own  style  and  that 
of  an  Ehzabethan  dramatist.  Enjambment 
like  this : 

I 

Love  her.  .  .  . 

is  too  often  used  without  any  such  effect  as  it 
gave  to  Shelley  in  : 

Is  this  the  scene 

Where  the  old  earthquake  demon  taught  her  young 

Ruin  ? 

235 


A.    C.    SWINBURNE 

the  "  spirit  of  sense "  recurs  twice  ;  God  and 
the  priests  are  despitefuUy  treated ;  but  the 
mannerisms  are  no  bar  to  Force  and  rapidity. 
The  poet's  most  noticeable  intervention  is  the 
device  of  casting  over  the  play,  and  chiefly  over 
the  deceit  by  which  Rosamond  turns  the  king's 
favourite  warrior  into  her  seducer  and  her 
avenger,  the  "  mad  might  of  midsummer."  The 
warrior,  Almachildes,  when  told  that  it  was  not 
his  mistress  who  had  shared  his  bed,  asks  : 

Art  not  thou — 
Or  am  not  I— sunsmitten  through  the  brain 
By  this  mad  might  of  midsummer  ? 

The  king  himself,  in  a  scene  where  Rosamond 
plays  with  her  avenger  and  her  victim  tragically 
and  ironically,  cries : 

I  would  tliis  fierce  Italian  June  were  dead  .  .  . ; 

and  again  in  the  banqueting  hall  at  his  last  hour  : 

This  June  makes  babes  of  men  .  .  .  when  the  heat 
Burns  life  half  out  of  us. 

He  asks  Almachildes  if  his  memory  is  "burnt 
out  by  stress  of  summer,"  putting  down  all  that 
is  strange  to  that ;  w^hen  he  is  about  to  take  the 
cup  and  drink  to  the  queen  he  reflects  that  there 
are  "  but  two  days  more  for  June  to  burn  and 
live."      "  Queen,"  he  says,   "  I  drink  to  thee." 

236 


I 


THE    PLAYS 

She  thanks  him  and  bids  a  counsellor  give  him 
the  cup,  saying :  "  Women  slain  by  fire  thirst 
not  as  I  to  pledge  thee."  Almachildes  rises 
and  stabs  him,  and  with  the  words,  "  Thou,  my 
boy  ? "  he  dies.     Then  says  Rosamond  : 

I,     But  he  hears  not.     Now,  my  warrior  guests, 

I  drink  to  the  onward  passage  of  his  soul 

Death.     Had  my  hand  turned  coward  or  played  me  false. 

This  man  that  is  my  hand^  and  less  than  I 

And  less  than  he  bloodguilty,  this  my  death 

Had  been  my  husband's :  now  he  has  left  it  me. 

(Drinfcs.) 
How  innocent  are  all  but  he  and  I 
No  time  is  mine  to  tell  you.     Truth  shall  tell. 
I  pardon  thee,  my  husband  :  pardon  me.     (Dies.) 

and  the  old  counsellor  says : 

Let  none  make  moan.     This  doom  is  none  of  man's. 

Swinburne  had,  in  fact,  written  a  play  admirably 
like  those  which  he  had  been  imitating  since  he 
wrote  The  Quee/i  Mother.  Among  his  many 
experiments  in  foreign  languages  and  in  archaic 
forms,  Rosamond,  Qiteen  of  the  Lombards,  is  one 
of  the  most  perfect. 

His  last  play,  four  brief  scenes,  in  which 
Caesar  Borgia  procures  the  death  of  his  brother 
Francesco,  Duke  of  Gandia,  must  have  been 
written  chiefly  for  the  pleasure  of  blasphemous 
laughter  at  the  intricate  relationships  of  the 
Borgia    family.     When    Vanozza,    the    Pope's 

237 


A.    C.    SVVINIUJRNE 

mistress,  tells  her  son  Francesco  that  he  is  over 
fond,  Ccusar  says  : 

Nay,  no  whit. 
Our  heavenly  lather  on  earth  adores  no  less 
Our  mother  than  our  sister :  and  I  hold 
His  heart  and  eye,  his  spirit  and  his  sense. 
Infallible. 

The  contrast  between  Csesar's  licentiousness 
and  slnewdness  and  his  father's  heavier  and 
kindlier  worldliness,  Francesco  going  among  the 


Love  and  night  are  life  and  light : 

Sleep  and  wine  and  song 
Speed  and  slay  the  halting  day 

Ere  it  live  too  long  : 

Lucrezia  being  flattered  by  her  father — the 
father's  dread,  and  then  his  grief  at  the  news  of 
Francesco's  murder — Caesar's  scornful  banter — 
do  not  make  a  play.  The  excessively  mannered 
verses  produce  an  effect  something  like  one  of 
Lucian's  Dialogues  of  the  gods,  though  the 
loose  and  lengthy  method  obscures  the  effect 
and  lessens  the  credit  of  it.  With  good  speak- 
ing, dresses  and  scenery,  it  might  prove  amusing, 
but  so  might  a  thousand  other  dialogues.  It 
was  not  a  brilliant  conclusion :  it  was  more  in 
the  nature  of  a  posthumous  indiscretion  :  but  it 
was  a  sally  characteristic  of  the  poet,  the  climber, 
swimmer  and   rider,  the    lover  of  women  and 

238 


THE    PLAYS 

sunlight,  of  the  Sea  and  Liberty,  who  died  a 
year  afterwards,  on  April  10,  1909.  He  was 
buried  in  the  rocky  cemetery  at  Bonchurch, 
Isle  of  Wight,  near  the  home  and  the  sea  of  his 
boyhood,  of  the  days  when  he  was  chanting 
Atalanta  in  Calydon,  celebrated  often  in  his 
poetry  and  lastly  in  the  dedication  of  The  Sisters 
to  his  aunt,  the  Lady  Mary  Gordon.  The 
garden  of  her  house,  The  Orchard,  near  Vent- 
nor,  had  been  to  him  one  of  the  sweetest  corners 
of  the  island,  and  recalling  it  in  that  dedication 
he  connected  it  for  the  generations  of  his  lovers 
with  himself  and  the  sea  : 

The  springs  of  earth  may  slacken,  and  the  sun 
Find  no  more  laughing  lustre  to  relume 

Where  once  the  sunlight  and  the  spring  seemed  one  ; 
But  not  on  heart  or  soul  may  time  or  doom 
Cast  aught  of  drought  or  lower  with  aught  of  gloom 

If  past  and  future,  hope  and  memory,  be 

Ringed  round  about  with  love,  fast  bound  and  free. 

As  all  the  world  is  girdled  with  the  sea. 


THE    END 


NOTES  AND  REFERENCES 


Swinburne  :    A  Lecture  by  J.  W.  Mackail. 

Oxford. 
Edinburgh  Review,  October  1906. 
Mrs.  M.  C.  J.  Leith  in  The  Contemporary 

Review,  April  1910 
Quarterly  Review,  October  1905. 
The  Contemporary  Review,  April  1910. 
Poems  and  Ballads — Third  Series. 
Essays  and  Studies. 
A  Study  of  Shakespeare. 
The  Contemporary  Review,  April  1910. 
Studies  in  Prose  and  Poetry. 
The  Contemporary  Review,  April  1910. 
Studies  in  Prose  and  Poetry. 
Astrophel. 

Essays  and  Studies. 
Contemporary  Review,  April  1910. 
Studies  in  Prose  and  Poetry. 
A  Study  of  Victor  Hugo. 
Studies  in  Prose  and  Poetry. 
Essays  and  Studies. 
A  Study  of  Victor  Hugo. 
Studies  in  Prose  and  Poetry. 
Miscellanies. 

Studies  in  Prose  and  Poetry. 
Miscellanies. 

Memoirs  of  Burne- Jones. 
Essays  and  Studies. 
Memoirs  of  Burne-Jones. 
The    Contemporary    Review,    June    1907 — 

Edmund  Gosse. 
54      10     Memoirs  of  Burne-Jones. 


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Tho    Contemporary    Review,    June    1907 — 

Edmund  (Josse. 
The  Times,  April  12,  1909. 
The    (Contemporary    Review,    .lune    1907 — 

Edmund  Gosse. 
The  Contemporary  Review,  April  1910. 
The  Spectator,  September  6,  1862. 
Les  Cenci.     Translated  into  French  by  Tola 

Dorian,  with  Introduction  by  Swinburne. 
CJmstelard. 
Quoted  by   Ernest   Rhys.     The  Nineteenth 

Century,  July    1909.' 
The  Contemporary  Review,  June  1909. 
Shidies  in  Prose  and  Poetry. 
The  Athenceum,  June  10,  1877. 
Quarterly  Review,  July  1902. 
The  Spectator,  May  31,  1873. 
The  Athenaeum,  April  14,  1877. 
Introduction     to      Shakespeare.      (World's 

Classics.) 
The  Contemporary  Review,  June  1909, 
The  Contemporary  Review,  June  1909. 
Ernest    Rhys    in    the    Nineteenth    Century, 

June  1909. 


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